Top 115 Quotes & Sayings by Chris Thile
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Chris Thile.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
I play the mandolin, which people don't often expect great things from. But it has it's charms, and it's my voice. I feel like I had as little choice in the matter as I do my speaking and singing voice.
My musical output has been consistently acoustic, but my taste has not. I love everything. As long as it's good, I'm in.
It's like wine and food, or coffee and a pastry - coffee's awesome and a chocolate croissant is awesome, and together, they're transcendent. To me, music is the same way. Chris Stapleton is transcendent. Julien Baker is transcendent. Together, they're going to be euphoria.
You need to put yourself in the way of the music that stood the test of time. You're doing yourself an incredible disservice not be interested in the width and breadth of it.
Calvin is a constant reminder that I'm not always as present as I want to be. His go-to state of being is present. So I'm really grateful of that part of being his parent.
Like a sporting event, live events are the one thing you can't have anytime you want them.
Hats off to musicians who just want a pure escape. I have a lot of fondness for pure escapism. I don't feel like it's irresponsible, I think sometimes you really need to take a breather.
I think there's probably really wonderful music that has been lost due to the lack of preservation methods way back in the day.
My life conforms to music, not the other way around.
I can't listen to music while I'm doing something else. Well, unless I'm working out. But I, like, fall off the treadmill all the time if I'm listening to something that I like too much.
What makes one type of music classical and one bluegrass and one folk - these things aren't what's important.
I think that we'll see the concept of 'genre' continue to die a slow and painful death.
Since I was little, I've always put a lot of pressure on myself.
Bill Monroe is not singing about life in America. He's singing about life in Kentucky and Tennessee. And yet it's had this tremendous impact, not just in America but in the world. Why is Bill Monroe's hyper-regional music so universal? We can be so different and yet still share a tremendous amount.
We don't have any genre-based allegiances.
My grandmother got me recordings of the 'Goldberg Variations,' in addition to the 'Brandenburg Concertos,' the Mozart string quartets and Beethoven's 'Seventh Symphony.'
I just want the opportunity to transcend my personal boundaries and the only way you can do that is by latching on to other people's coat-tails.
We love music, and when it's good we flip. And we want to get to the core of why it's good.
I'm a massive tennis fan! I love it to bits. I wish I could play, but I am worried that the muscles required for tennis are sort of in direct opposition to those required for mandolin playing.
You go to the Grammys and you say, 'I don't care if I win or not,' and of course you care.
For one, the whole concept of 'Live From Here' - writing a song every week - was like composition bootcamp.
I'll often order a cortado and stand there quizzing the poor barista about the extraction time, how much pressure they are applying and how many grams are in it. I am that guy. It's reprehensible to the max, but it's how I go through my life.
I would love to be one of those fellows who combine formal and folk music approaches.
If you're sitting there going, 'Well, these particular genres are the only genres I like,' that's like saying, 'I only like books with this particular kind of cover.' Because that's all genre is. It's a discussion of texture.
I've performed in concert halls thousands and thousands of times in my life.
The great thing about jamming is that you come in with zero preconceptions. Someone might want to play something that suggests something else to you, and the next thing you know you're on a 20-minute adventure.
I certainly love the bluegrass ensemble, I think it's a powerful tool, but I don't think it's more than a tool.
The radio - this old piece of technology that's still crackingly current - gives you this communal experience in real time.
Growing up in a bluegrass or acoustic-oriented world, the musicians become so focused on performance, as far as playing. We tend to overanalyze the notes, so you're always trying to sharpen everything up.
Coffee is pretty big in my life. It shows up in my lyrics a bunch, the same way the ocean does. It's a constant force.
People who are happy with their neighborhoods in New York always say the same thing: 'It's such a neighborhood!' And that's how we feel about Carroll Gardens. We see all the same people who have been there a long time and are very friendly and welcoming to us.
In my mind, there's this one 'super genre,' which is the only genre that matters, and that's the super genre of good music.
My folks were and are devoted public radio fans, who started listening to 'A Prairie Home Companion' in the 1980s; Garrison and Co. were the permanent headliners of their weekends.
Ever since I became better acquainted with classical music, I've wanted to try my hand at longer forms, but I could never really see my way to it. And after I got divorced, all of a sudden I had a lot of pent-up energy and lots of stuff that had gone into trying to make this failing relationship work that kind of got reapplied.
I love putting on shows. I absolutely adore it - that's why I've been doing it now for so long.
The constructive criticism that I take very seriously is from people I know and respect, and they don't have to be musicians. But I do have to know where they're coming from.
The darned thing about mandolins is they're really hard to turn up as loud as you would need to be to play with a drum set. They cease to sound like mandolins.
The great musics of the world are great for very similar structural reasons: good melody, good harmony, and a balance of feminine and masculine energy.
When they invented the mandolin, it was as if they were trying to come up with the least efficient means of extracting noise from a piece of wood.
Everyone talks about how depressing Radiohead are. I don't hear it. They've created their own universe and it is dimly lit, but it's not inherently dark.
You know, I look at Twitter as kind of a roomful of people who are interested in what you have to say. The people who follow you are, presumably, somewhat interested with what you have to say.
I am an incorrigible coffee geek. I make espresso.
Generally speaking, I think one has to take reviews with a grain of salt, unless you know who the person is and what their qualifications are.
Music should never be a dictatorship. It should be a symbiotic relationship between the musician and the audience.
A cocktail and an oyster is an awfully good thing after a park, especially one close to water.
I consider it a great honor to be part of the dissemination of hearable art.
To be able to rub shoulders with kids who have spent their entire lives studying the classics... that's something I need to improve my overview.
Really the greatest music I've ever heard I've hated the first time I heard it. It's been abrasive at first; it's been something that challenged me in a way that I wasn't fully comfortable with.
It's very hard to make grand, romantic gestures on a mandolin, and there are times, particularly when playing Bach, that you long for just a little more sustain. But for better or worse it's my voice, and the trade-off comes with increased intimacy. It's like you're beckoning the audience closer: 'C'mere, I've got something to tell ya.'
The greatest creators are as hungry to consume as they are to create.
Presenting the American songbook as a living, breathing entity that's expanding all the time is very important.
I didn't have stage parents and sometimes I've envied people who did because I felt like, I guess, I'm compulsively worried I'm not accomplishing enough.
Having small children, you start thinking about how everything in your life revolves around doing the best you can for this little being, trying to make a good life for that person.
No one wants to hear me doing my best Garrison Keillor... I think that he's inimitable; he's one in a billion.
I went through a political shift when I was nineteen or twenty. I felt a certain way, and after the shift, I felt the opposite way. And never once did someone yelling at me or making me feel stupid do anything other than reinforce the convictions I had. What did get to me was people listening to me.
The power of live music is vast. Live music is a wonderful way to spend some time.
I'm really not handy. I'm not good at things like changing a light bulb. If something is broken, the chances of me being able to fix it are slim to none.
I'm always excited about music, but having spent so much time in its pursuit - well, my musical life is complicated.
The more you look at great art of any kind, you'll see that there's this thread running through all of it.
It seems like if they'd given Bob Dylan a pen and paper in the cradle that he would've come up with a great song. I'd love to write songs like that.
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