A Quote by Jeffrey Lewis
I do feel pretty lucky that I'm not so great at playing and singing, it forces me to make sure I've really got something worth presenting because I can't rely on any kind of virtuosity to dazzle people with.
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There's a vast ecosystem for music outside of Myspace and Facebook and you need to make sure that your music is in as many hands as possible. I wanted people to share my music and tell friends about me, and if you want to rely on word of mouth, you have to make it easy for people. I got lucky because I had a few songs that hit big and got a lot of links on blog posts.
When I studied computer science at Duke University in the first half of the 1980s, I had professors who treated women differently than men. I kind of got used to it. At Microsoft, I had to use my elbows and make sure I spoke up at the table, but it was an incredibly meritocratic place. Outside, in the industry, I would feel the sexism. I'd walk into a room and until I proved my worth, everyone would assume that the guy presenting with me had credibility and I didn't.
I'm a believer in presenting something that is worth paying to see. I've always felt lucky in that the work that pleases me pleases other people as well.
When art is really great, it's really powerful, can really do something to you, make you feel more alive and make you feel more connected to something. If you don't feel like that when you do it, and you just make a movie to make money, that would be pretty boring to me. I just wouldn't do it. That would be like sitting in an office, which I don't want to do.
I'm really lucky to have the kind of people I've got around me. I've got such a great group of predominantly young people, but so diverse, and they bring different perspectives to the table. They will tell me exactly what's on their mind.
I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert. So I try to make a song where there is as much that is as distinct as I can get it, just if I'm playing it or if I'm singing it. That makes me really do a lot of stuff in the guitar work when I sit and try to figure out how to indicate what sort of dynamic I'm aiming for. Where, rhythmically, I want to go. That's sort of what ties a lot of different records together, is that it's usually always based around me singing and playing a guitar.
When I was born, my dad was playing music, so I'm pretty sure he was singing to me in the womb. I was born into music, in a way, because he was playing acoustic guitar. I was around an instrument growing up.
I certainly didn't predict people who spent years actively disliking the band to all of a sudden like the band. That's pretty funny to me, and it makes playing live kind of interesting, 'cos we're doing lots of things that don't really have a lot to do with that record, and even presenting the songs off that record in a way that's a little more muscular and without as much of the sheen, which is what I think part of what people really liked [about Kaputt].
I've got such great people around me. They don't really care if they make me angry. A lot of teams, they're afraid to make the artist angry, because they don't want to get fired and all that stuff. My team's pretty good about letting me know when to get in line.
I think me, Sean Bonnette and Laura Jane Grace, and a lot of the bands people feel that way about, we're just really honest in our lyrics. I think we got really lucky in that the right kind of people who would appreciate that heard us at the right time, because there are plenty of people that are honest in their lyrics.
I don't want to rely on what people say about me to feel good; playing's what I really enjoy.
I'm huge on the dynamic of my show and the experience, not just performing songs. It's important to me to make sure that people experience every song, and feel like I'm singing directly to them. Your eyes never want to leave the stage because there's always something happening.
My mom is really great with me and for me, because I think she makes an effort to make sure there is some normalcy in my life, and her and my dad don't really treat me any differently.
What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!
I do feel like I'm in this lucky position where I can write something and people will read it, and I feel like I should say something that's probably worth saying... I feel like it's something worth saying, and one more person saying it is better.
Playing and singing at the same time is pretty cool, but sometimes it's difficult to know when you can just really let go a bit because you've got to get back to bloody microphone and sing some stuff.
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