I do a few shows every year, but I'm mostly at home, making music. Day and night.
My track record suggests that I'm not quite a mainstream darling, that's for sure. I don't want to only cater to a small audience, but it's just kind of worked out that way.
I've kinda been an off-Broadway sensation. There aren't a lot of lights or big marquees around my name or my work, yet my core audience knows exactly where I am.
I didn't sign a record deal; I didn't do any of that. I made my record independently, and I went out and hit the road in a van.
I love James Taylor, Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith and Nine Inch Nails.
I started my entire journey as an indie artist. Ownership has its benefits and it's just about putting in the work. I'm just working.
I don't know too many people because I stay at my house, I write songs, I go to the store.
I don't think I'm kind of universally known. I think in the indie world I'm probably better known than in some mainstream Hollywood terms.
I'm an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists.
My attempt at really doing classic sort of songwriting is Shins stuff.
For a decade, Emma-Lee Moss has been steadily making weird, moody, melancholic music under the moniker 'Emmy the Great' that has been referred to as nue-folk, anti-folk, synthpop, and, most of all, literary.
I'm indie through and through. I've always gone out with boys in bands.
Being an indie artist, you have to fight for position against a major.
David Longstreth is one of the great guitar heroes of our generation.
It's a lot of work being an indie artist, but it's worth it.
I think of myself as an underground name. Quite a cult comic.
The record company doesn't know what to do with me, because I'm not a Lily Allen, but I'm not really an indie artist, either. All the best artists have been in the middle.
The lead singer for Deerhunter, Bradford Cox... I don't like saying people are geniuses or whatever, but I just think that dude is so good at every single thing he does. He stays within his genre, but I think he does so well experimenting with stuff.
I think I'm commercial underground. I'm not commercial in the way that people consider 'pop,' but I'm not underground in the way that people consider that. either. I am just a cool guy.
A friend of mine introduced me to Thurston Moore because she thought I would like him. He was playing with the tallest band in the world, the Coachmen. They were sort of like Talking Heads, jangly guitar, Feelies guitar. Anyway, it was love at first sight. His band broke up that night. And we started playing.
It's a world now where you don't necessarily have to be on the radio or be on the TV to be a star. Your audience can find you and find the music.
There's a band from Brooklyn called Frankie Cosmos, which is very nice.
I wear glasses and suits, so I guess I am an indie artist.
I'm not the guy to get big record company budgets. My budget is Britney Spears' catering money.
I made a CD in my dorm room and put it on the Internet, and my friends blew it up. Within a few months, I was doing shows across the country without a record deal, without a single, without anything.
