The thing about Bob Dylan's performative essence is that he keeps singing these old songs as well as the new songs, and the old songs become new with new arrangements and new contexts as time goes by.
All the new songs have been written since the re-issue of Diamond Day. With my first royalties I got a Mac and a little mixer and a keyboard, figured out the basics of a music program, and gradually started to write and record the songs and the arrangements.
I was classically trained. But more than just the fact that I play violin, there's a lot of classical elements in the way I write, in the way I hear chords. A lot of times, I think of my songs as a symphony made out of electronics rather than instruments. And I love to do orchestral arrangements of my songs after they're done.
My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.
A frustration that I've had recently is that a lot of songs that I listen to draw on scenarios that aren't very realistic, so I just wanted to do something that was more down to earth. And I think my fans, who already know a lot about me, will learn something new.
I'm somebody who grew up listening to a lot of musical theater, so getting to finally write musical theater songs and songs that sound that way - the emphasis being on the storytelling, but the arrangements and the orchestrations can be really varied - I found that to be, actually, a really joyful discovery.
I get a lot of joy out of covering other people's songs, and, at my best, I think I bring something a little new to a lot of them.
I think a lot of that album ["Tonight" ] is still very good . . . the songs, but I think I was indifferent to the arrangements.
The rest of the songs on the album [Mortal City ] have spare arrangements on them. Steve [Miller], really loved that. He'd just come off of a project with someone who basically had to mask the fact that there were no songs there with production. He said, "Oh, my God, you have real songs here!"
My songs are more arrangements than they are songs.
I feel like a lot of like the old-timey Christmas songs, the classics, a lot of it is very vocal. A lot of harmonies and, like, crooners, it puts you in that holiday spirit, I feel like.
I like that Metallica has found a way to have these non-pedestrian arrangements but then the vocal melody is strong and intense. I've always appreciated that as a fan.
I love working and writing new songs. But sometimes you need to wait, to have something in your mind, and then you can let yourself play music.
I like philharmonic music a lot. That kind of symphonic music has always been an integral part of the arrangements in many of my songs and background scores.
We're more about other things over odd timings: orchestration, composition, horn/vocal arrangements - that's where we get super weird.
After playing so many songs in churches for eight or nine years, I've learned what songs people react to. Then I just had fun with the arrangements. That's how this album came together.