Top 128 Quotes & Sayings by Jim James - Page 2

I'll only pick up my guitar if something is knocking on the door. Once the melodies have sort of been bothering me for a time, then I pick up my guitar and try to find them. But only if they want to be found.

You spend all day getting the song goo,d and you're listening to it late at night, and you're happy with it. But you should sleep on it and come back in the morning and make sure.

The whole Jacket thing is so much about us playing together and creating this circle of power.

I think reading is one of the greatest forms of magic available to us on the planet. Reading is so important.

I really believe in not compromising your art. I feel like I've never compromised my art.

The gospel funk soul era, that's what I'm obsessed with - pretty much all the '70s through early '80s.

I think we're going to look back on the Internet in 50 to 100 years as a big mistake.

If you're reissuing something, it's important to have demos and everything else from that time that wasn't used.

For a lot of people, life's been pretty good. There hasn't been true terror right in your face.

I always think of albums as the format. I think it's perfect. I don't think you can tamper with that. It's not just sound, the analog, which is so much richer. It's the format. You're constrained by just 45 minutes, and it's perfect to me. I don't want to listen to any more than, and I live and breathe music.

I've always loved that, on all the Dylan and Springsteen and Marley and Neil Young reissues that they've done: It's so cool to hear alternate versions and how the song started in their mind.

For me, it's more powerful to hear people sing about God than love in most circumstances because I've been hearing people sing about love for most of my life.

I love hearing old Bob Marley recordings that he did before he made the versions everybody knows.

We should always be trying to tear down the walls and say, 'I'm no different than you.'

If you do something, you should do it because you love it, and you should follow your heart and make it how your heart wants it to be made. But it's a difficult world, especially for musicians.

I love making each record sound different.

I've never stared out at the ocean while I've made a record before - that enhances things in a strange way.

I've just had this idea pop in my head of trying to learn a new song every da, and try and play it that night. That's been fun for me because it's a little bit of a scary adventure, playing a song for the first time in front of people and letting it just be what it is.

It's a joy, the process itself, even instrumentally, playing and constructing music. It's just so beautiful to me.

I love the thrill of putting on a record and feeling like you got the wrong one from the factory.

Preservation Hall is the sound of joy. When they start playing, people start moving.

I'd write songs like 'One Big Holiday,' and we'd play it and say, 'It's too heavy for 'At Dawn.' Let's save it for the next one.' We had more time for that, but when you mix a song, the general rule of thumb for us is a song a day or usually a day and a half.

I really have a lot of respect for music, the art form of music. It's my whole life. I don't care about any of that other stuff. And I have always felt that way. I'll build a career on my own merits, my own hard work and nothing else.

Youth is wasted on the young. And it doesn't even matter if you sit a young person down and tell them, 'You're so healthy, take advantage of it before it's gone!' They still can't hear it.

When people are recording, and they're like, 'I want to get the drum sound of the Beatles,' I hate that.

I feel like everybody's got their health issues and their battles, and yeah, mine go up and down. It's never really over.

I think anyone who knows the audio process knows what mixing and mastering is.

You want to make a record that stands the test of time and that people enjoy.

I feel like I've paid a really heavy cost, a really heavy physical health cost, for the years of touring and how physical I've been onstage.

I feel like the 'Supernova' record, those songs are very me. It's a more honest representation of me than any record I have made prior to that.

There were lots of songs that were on 'It Still Moves' that I had written, and we had played - rehearsed, but also played live a couple of times - that could've gone on 'At Dawn', but we always knew we wanted to make a record that was more quote-unquote 'rock n' roll.'

I feel like the world gets so consumed and gobbled up by action, and the pace of life is so frantic, and people feel like, in order to move somebody, you have to do something shocking or violent or something insane and fast.

'What's Going On' is one of the greatest albums ever made. I definitely wasn't aiming to make my 'What's Going On,' you know what I mean? That album is definitely deep in my DNA. I've probably listened to that more than maybe any other album ever in my entire life.

One thing I've learned is that the best thing a producer can do is help you be you.

That's why you put out records: hoping that people will connect with them. I mean, I play music for myself, for sure, and I would still play music even if people didn't like it. But it means a lot when it connects to people and they enjoy it. But it's funny: you get criticism as much as you get praise. It kind of evens out after awhile.

We don't have universal health care. Education is so expensive. We have these massive problems, you know? So it makes me really happy to think that somebody could have all the music in the world for free. But at the same time, if you have enough money to pay for it, you should pay for it.

It's really important to be free and be open and honest about the things you want to do. Just 'cause you want to make a solo record or another record with another band, it doesn't have to be an insult or a slight to the band you've been with for a long time.

Some things cannot be explained. This is part of the magic of life. There cannot be a word or an idea or a definition attached to everything.

I think there are lots of things that people think are so different but they're not. People think there is a huge difference between hip hop and country music, but there is really not when you start looking into themes and what people are struggling with or celebrating. When you break it down to the chords and the beats it is all the same. Personally, I am obsessed with music as it is a limitless tunnel that you can explore.

I think it's every artist's dream to create something that will endure, something that people will listen to until there are no more people on earth to listen to things.

You can drive at 16, go to war at 18, drink at 21, and retire at 65. So who can say what age you have to be to find your true love?

I feel like hate and darkness get so much airtime. We need to give peace and love as much airtime as we can. We need to be teaching our kids that it's okay to love whoever you want to love, and it's okay to be who you want to be, and it's okay to feel that everybody should be treated equally and with respect. Such simple things that I don't know why it's hard for people to understand.

Songwriting is ... all about intuition - this thing pops into your head for a reason and it's up to you to follow it. It's like there's a spirit, or intuitive network, that comes through all of us, but most people don't take the time to think about it or remember it. These little things pop into our heads - it's just a process of intuition. The initial thought comes in a baby state, and you work on that some more.

People always want reasons for things ... but sometimes there are no reasons.

I think one's musical life should be free and open to new experience in order to keep expanding your mind and horizons.

I keep wanting people to realize that there needs to be a tidal wave of peace and love. People should be treated with love and respect regardless of the color of their skin or their sexual preference. We need to keep saying that as much as we can and as loud as we can.

It is just so cool to play on the beach right next to the water. I am deeply moved by water as I think most people are - so to play music with it is a most powerful experience.

I think that live music is something that the Internet can never kill.

God forbid Donald Trump gets elected president; think about how many people are going to get f**ked over or how much harder we're going to have to fight for equality.

Don't let your silly dreams fall in between the crack of the bed and the wall.

Huge events in life inform you in so many ways that you know about and many other ways that you cannot even comprehend. To go through a big experience can have such a profound impact on everything that you do. It's the common thing that everyone says about a tragedy - it is a really tough thing to happen but it is amazing, and a gift, if you can look at the positive aspects that come out and the friendships that are made from the people that provided help and support.

For me, changing the sound and listening to new music - that's just so fun. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You're never going to please everybody. I feel that at the end of the day, I should make what I want to make since somebody is going to hate it and somebody is going to love it too. I can't control that.

I feel lucky that I even have the luxury to write about feeling lonely or feeling confused. When you think about climate change that means that we won't have an Earth to be lonely on.

Louisville is a place with no labels. It’s not the South, it’s not Chicago, and you don’t think of it as you think of New York or LA. It has some Southern romanticism to it, but also a Northern progressivism, this weird urban island in the middle of the state of Kentucky that has always provided a fertile, often dark, bed. For us, Louisville and the surrounding areas are the center of massive creativity and massive weirdness. The place has its flaws: You move away, but you’re always going to come back.

I am very blessed to have a great group of long-term friends and a huge family that has been very loving and supportive. I try to stay connected to that and contribute as much as I can.

Fashion is one of the most beautiful forms of art we have. It's a form of art that every person gets to possess and create for themselves.

It's tough to make music and make it your own, and not have somebody call it something you don't agree with but can't control. Sometimes the press doesn't realize how much power they have and how they can shape somebody's life. I think there's a lot of people just trying to make music and get their art out there, and their heads get f**ked by the press calling them this or calling them that.

I can't understand how some bands are criticized for doing something different and other bands are rewarded for doing things different. At the end of the day, I throw my hands up in the air and say, "F**k it." I've come to accept that no matter what we do, there's going to be somebody out there on the Internet that says it's a piece of s**t and somebody who says they really like it. That's happened with every single album we've put out.

Reading is one of the greatest forms of magic available to us on the planet.

When I had dinner with a friend or a loved one and one of you pays for the check and the other says, "I owe you next time." I like to think that we're eternally even - that they don't owe me anything or I don't owe them anything if you have a connection with somebody or a love with somebody. I like to think that there's no debt to pay. You love each other and you're happy to pay for dinner every time.