I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music. But for some reason it did something to me - it resonated.
There's no man alive who has any answers. We all know that. It's like the guru trip. All a guru can do is direct you to something that you probably already know about yourself, something you might want to followup on. Apply the same thing to music and records. You might get something from a particular record that hits a nerve and something inside you. But that's your vision of it.
Music is real. It affects people; it's real.
When you do something in music and see it happen again in the next generation, you know you're on the right wave length.
I think musicians naturally gravitate toward music that sounds real.
The beauty of music is that everyone hears it their own way, and every song you hear leaves an impression on you that alters the way you hear everything from that point on.
...."the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of the day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high noon.
I've always said music should make you laugh, make you cry or make you think.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
I think it's almost a law of nature that there are only certain things that hit an emotive space, and that's what was always special for me about music: it made me feel something.
It's difficult to explain exactly how I react to music, but if it makes me feel anything at all, then I'll have some kind of emotional relationship to it. That's what defines good music to me - if it makes me truly feel something.
I don't sing a song unless I feel it. The song don't tug at my heart, I pass on it. I have to believe in what I'm doing.
When the melody touches your heart emotionally and the words hit your brain intellectually, more than likely you'll find you'll have an excellent song to sing.
And, so, when I picked up the guitar, suddenly, just playing a couple of notes really, really spoke to me. It was almost like I should have been doing it prior to that. You know, it was something that just felt really natural.
With contemporary music, you automatically get connected. It connects you to the emotion of the characters.
A few things I've noticed about myself as a listener, and the music that I relate to and the music that's continued to mean something to me since I was a little kid or a teenager, is that they're songs that tell stories and songs that come from a place of experience.
I think God gave me an inner dictionary. If you play the right music that my heart loves, lyrics just come right to me.
To me, music is emotion and if when you're listening to it and it doesn't make you feel that, then it's not music.
Yet ["One More Try" ] really seemed to connect with people, which is a wonderful thing and a marvelous coincidence.
All I know is, I play the guitar, beat it out, and sing a song that has some damn resonance that we feel as musicians. We send it out and people get it, and that's a good thing.
The difference between a good song and a great song is a good song is one that you know, you'll put on in your car or you'll dance to it. But I think a great song you'll cry to it, or you get chills. I think a great song says how you feel better than you could.
Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it's memory.
Since I first picked up the violin, I've been very interested in tone and texture: I would have very visceral reactions to the texture of a snare drum or a pedal steel guitar or a violin.
Music is a spiritual doorway. ... Its power comes from the fact that It plugs directly into the soul.
I don't want to have one hit, one song of the summer, and then have me disappear forever. I really want my things to last, and I want my songs and my bodies of work to resonate with people. I want to hit people - at least make a dent in them. I want to make a mark somehow.
