A Quote by Cass McCombs

When you're playing festivals, you only get a half-hour. It's like a meat market. You don't get to be artistic. You don't get to play music. It's called a showcase for a reason.
Usually when festivals are really huge it's kind of weird. It's totally fun for me and my band to play in front of a crowd that doesn't necessarily know who we are, but festivals get pretty impersonal when they get super large.
I remember early on, for instance, having to play wedding gigs, that I hated playing the music. Now I don't have to play music that I don't like. I only get to do what I enjoy, so that's pretty lucky.
I don't do a lot when I'm in Gascony. I swim and play the odd game of golf, but mainly I sit around. We're set an hour-and-a-half from the Pyrenees and an hour-and-a-half from the Bay of Biscay, so we get plenty of storms. But we're surrounded by vines and sunflowers - it's lovely.
I play vinyl and CDs. Playing vinyl is the best sound quality you can get playing music loudly, so that's the main reason I do that.
I like the music. I don't like the business. I get very tired of the travel and moving, constantly moving. But the hour-and-a-half that I'm making music, I'm one of the happiest people on earth.
I think festivals are way more easygoing than back-to-back tours are. 'Cause for me, when you get to go to a festival, you get to hang out all day, and you're really taken care of, and there's usually a little artist village where all the artists have their own tents, and it's catered, and then you go and play an hour-long set depending on where you are on the lineup. And then you go back and you hang out and you even get to go watch other artists play. So it's really just a fun interactive experience for everybody.
I quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life. So if you're playing a builder you get to know about building, if you're playing a scientist or a physician or something you get to know about physics. And similarly with this world I like exploring their culture, that very sort of upper middle class, addictive... that's part of the reason I love it.
When you do a half-hour show, there's only so much you can do. At best, you're going to get a character with two-and-a-half dimensions.
There are some bands for whom that works very well and it's no disrespect to them because I'm sure there's something honest and natural about it, but for us I feel like it would be dishonest and kinda disrespectful to that artwork to do that. To be like: "Okay, we're going to go back and only play these songs, even though we have an hour to an hour and a half set and we gotta play more songs, but we'll skimp you on your extra half hour." That's just silly to me.
It was an hour and a half plane ride, so I slept. I try to sleep because that's probably the only time I get to get my real sleep. When I can't sleep I read books or watch movies.
When you do an hour and a half and you destroy, like tonight was great. I had an awesome time. I realized that I'd been up there for about an hour and a half and I realized, "Wow, I'm gonna get out of here without doing Walken." It is a bit of a moral victory.
There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat. A key glistening in the ignition. I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did.
I feel like I'll be defined more so by ... when I get a chance to play roles where I'm the father/husband. I'd like to continue with the action stuff, but when I get to play the father/husband role, I think that will be the time where I'm playing who I really am. I look forward to playing those kind of heroic characters, the types that are usually associated with Denzel Washington.
When you get called the n-word, as a black person you can do anything. It's like getting a gold star in Super Mario Brothers and junk. I hear the music when I hear the n-word. I get right into it; I get really into it. You can do anything. You could be in a fancy restaurant - just start throwing poop at the walls. People be like, 'What are you doing?' 'Someone called him the n-word.
I don't look at people's expressions, because I still get nervous when I play, especially when I first put the harp up there. I just try to tune - it takes me a half-hour to tune, and I get nervous if I look at anybody when I do it.
If you feel something artistic, you need to get it out of you, do it. You gotta get out and play in front of people. You can't stay in the bedroom, get out sooner rather than later. Use your gut instinct.
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