I actually sing. There's no lip-syncing whatsoever. Everything is live, and it's real. It's not fake.
Theatre is immediate, it's alive, you're there with the audience, it can't be done again and again and again and again, it's organic.
Motion is the sign of life.
I don't use the big video screens that a lot of other artists use because personally, I think it's kind of a crutch. I think sometimes it's like watching television as opposed to really getting involved with what is happening onstage and the people in your section.
The songs of mine that don't work, the ones that I wouldn't consider playing live for instance, fail to integrate their idiosyncracies. It's not that they fail because they're boring, but because they overreach.
It's hard for me to play seated theaters because people tend to sit down and get a little bit complacent, so it's less energy. It's just very dry and dead. People start to feel like they're watching a movie. The environment when they walk into it, it's not standing room only, smoking and drinking and rock 'n' roll. So it's a little bit dangerous to do that.
And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.
A recording of a performance is a recording of a performance. It's not the performance.
I like things that don't sound particularly processed or mechanical or made by machines. I like music that contains human elements, with all their flaws. There's air in it, and you can hear a room of a bunch of guys playing. Those are the magic parts.
The nature of 'SNL' is that it's so in-the-moment.
Whereas with us - what you hear is what's happening right then and there on the stage - so we don't need no stinking technology.
We weren't by any means like the Grateful Dead or something, who could just roll on and on and on.
I want to be there for the last note of 'Freebird' when that happens.
As soon as it's behind computers and machines, which the majority of the planet loves, I find it cold. I need to hear breathing. I like the idea of the mic being a captation of everything that's happening around.
The liveness in me just loves to feel the liveness in growing things, in grass and rain and leaves and flowers and sun and feathers and furs and earth and sand and moss.
What draws me to the theatre, and what appealed to me about Too Much Light, is that you have no idea what's going to happen. That's the most exciting part of theatre, it's never the same. If it were, it would be like watching a movie.
