A Quote by Dan Auerbach
A lot of musicians are super - insecure and they take forever and they obsess over the minutia and it's really stifling. It's not that the band The Black Keys is that confident, it's that we're not striving for perfection. We are just trying to have fun. None of the music that we like is perfect. It's good. And real. We just want to make real records, flaws and all.
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I'm a big perfectionist! I'm trying to channel super-confident women like Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, because I realized that if you want something, you really have to go for it, just like they do.
I played a lot of keyboards, but I really wanted to produce the sound that was in my head that I was trying to emulate on the keys. I wanted to do it for real. And it makes me look at the keys in a different way. So it's like I'm looking at the guitar and bass more like meat and potatoes and keys like coloring over top of it, you know.
I don't really think of these as projects. I think of them as bands. I have tried to not just convene a group of musicians and make one record or make one gig and just drop it. Each of them develop over time. I have been really fortunate to keep a band like the Sextet together over three very different albums. Each time, the goal got more deep for me in terms of how I wanted to write for those people. So it is really about trying to develop ideas and trying to have a consistent focus on a way to come up with new ideas in music that I want to do.
I ain't going to lie: I was happy, man. Me and my sisters and my brother was mad cool. We all did the music thing. My dad had the keys to the church, so we would go over there and jam. So I just want my kids to have fun the right way. I want their type of trouble to be, like, "Aw, Dad, I locked the keys in the car." I don't want to hear about, "Oh, my friend just got shot."
We're just a real dirty band. We're raw, and we're rough. None of us are top-scale, top-line musicians. But I tell you what, you get your top-line musicians and see if they can entertain like us.
I'm just a music fan. I like pretty much all types of music, and I feel like I can get something out of everything. It just makes work a lot more fun whenever you're working on different things all the times and usually once I work with a band I usually will want to work with them again, just because we become good friends.
I'm a big fan of a lot of prog music. As a record collector as well, I won't throw anybody or any band under the bus, but a lot of the records are fun to collect, are not necessarily very good. There are a lot of prog bands out there that it's a really cool record, but it's, like, not really there.
This toxic striving for perfection is a female thing. How many men obsess about being perfect? For men, generally, good enough is good enough.
I don't think a lot of the times Foxygen songs require much editing. Our band rarely records a song and go, "God that sucked. We shouldn't show that to people." We're pretty confident in the way we make music, that rarely falters. We've just been doing it for so long, it's like a science between us. There's not a lot of times where we cut something or decide to not record it.
I'm just basically trying to make music that feels good. Right now in the music industry there's a real lack of intimacy. You don't really connect with the artist as much anymore, and you don't really understand where they are. I'm basically doing music that illustrates who I am and where I am in my life.
I realize that life isn't perfect - it can't be perfect. I can drive myself nuts trying to make it perfect, or I can just have a lot of fun with the kids.
I want to just be able to act and be like the girl next door or the cute babysitter or the busy mom who's fun or who knows, maybe something super dramatic, somebody who's really insecure and angry.
When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.
To be honest, I've never looked really hard for musicians. I'll just randomly meet people. I've never interviewed bandmates or anything like that. The reason I like playing with Chad and Devin is that they're just really, really good musicians and good players. There's not a lot of sloppiness going on.
Some musicians make and record music; other musicians play in a band... I just make and record music, and I don't feel a part of anything in any music business.
I know most of my records are real good but I know that there are definitely things I would've changed at the end of the day. I work on things forever, and there are things I wish I didn't do, but ultimately I know the records are good. I kind of let go of big expectations, maybe because hopefully that means if I don't have them, that it'll do really well, but you just never know.
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