Musical Community Quotes

I think Baltimore is a wonderful artistic community with a lot of great musicians. It's kind of like a little secret for musicians.

Orchestras are like people. They're the sonic embodiment of their community.

For the people that don't know it, we've had members come and go from this band since the beginning. It's always been about collaboration, and it's been about just playing music with our friends.

No matter what setting I play in, I will always be New Orleans. It's one of the only cities where you can hang out with the Marsalis family, the Neville brothers, whoever it might be, and we all play together.

I realized that, all along, my theory was right: Make music that you want to hear, and instead of having fans that one day might criticize or abandon you, your fans aren't even fans. They're people with tastes similar to yours. They're friends you haven't met yet.

In New Orleans, people are still influenced by one another. You got these bands that play every week on Frenchmen Street, and on their breaks, they might go see the reggae band that's right next door. You might get the musicians from the reggae band to sit in with the brass musicians. Everyone is having fun.

To me, the band is like one of my homes, in fact. It's not like, 'I've got to get out of this band. I've got to go home.' This band is home in a lot of ways. It's my closest friends; it's a place where I really feel comfortable and happy.

I made one rule for myself, and I really try to live it: Play music you love, with people you love, for people you love. If I can't be that kind of musician, I'll drive a cab.

I loathe rock stars. I am a music nerd, a fan, a follower... just like any fan of music might be. And although I have blood-relatives, a lot of times I feel closer to my audience than my true family, because at least my fans get what I'm doing, to a certain extent, whereas my family does not.

I think Rudimental was a massive part of my life and such a great place and people and learning curve to be a part of.

It's great to have all this stuff at home. But when you want to make it for real, there's still nothing like making music with a bunch of other great musicians in the same room. That's one thing that'll never change.

To be in Boston, which is a great city and which is full of many colleges and young kids, and to be around that many people that were at the same point in their lives, who played guitar or whatever instrument - it was just perfect. It was a great environment.

With the jam bands I've seen, it's about music, and it's about theory, and it's about making everyone feel better with music.

People don't play music in New Orleans for the reasons they do in Nashville or L.A. - to become stars or to get rich - they play because they've got to. It's in the streets, in their family, in their blood.

Sonic Youth was a collective. There's something fantastic about the idea of making music is a social activity.

What is so refreshing playing with Neil Finn and all his friends is these people think exactly the same - regular people doing their thing and separating the music from the business.

Well, I was very lucky. I was brought up west southwest coast of Scotland and my mother and father had a music shop, and so I was surrounded by pianos and drums and guitars, and music, of course.

There's definitely a solitary aspect to not having a band, and there are times when I wish that I did.

Bringing people together is one of my favorite things... I believed that's what a rock 'n' roll Jesus would really do - bring people together through music.

We're the Tom Tom Club and our studio is the Clubhouse. It a way of making it a little more personal.

In the neighborhood that I grew up in - in New York on Long Island - there were a lot of musicians. For some reason, that time in history in our town in New York, everybody played. So it was all around me.

I think musicians are always supportive of each other because they want the groove to keep going on. They just basically want to play music.

I live a life of creating, sharing music with wonderful musicians that I love like family, and spreading a message through music that life is yours to live wide open, and do it your way with love.

There's no reason to stop. Who knows what's around the bend? To participate, meet new people. It's mostly other musicians and people like you, or anybody I meet who's in this, that keeps me going.

There's no ego when you're a ukulele player.