A Quote by Joe Casey

Everyone has a fantasy of what they want their band to sound like. However, because I knew nothing about making music, I was unable to describe what I wanted properly. — © Joe Casey
Everyone has a fantasy of what they want their band to sound like. However, because I knew nothing about making music, I was unable to describe what I wanted properly.
I enjoy making music alone, and I like keeping my options open for how I release my own songs. But everybody in Grizzly Bear is full of ideas. So it's kind of boring to come to the band with a complete song and be like: "Here's what I want you to do." With this record, we wanted to make everything feel like everyone - music that we could never do on our own. That's a real gift, and it's one of the best things about being in a band like this.
I wanted all the music to sound strong. It's all down to the restoration and mastering. In many ways I feel the work in general was never properly mastered in the first place. To me, making the music sound the way we wanted it was by far my biggest goal with the re-issues.
I do experiment with lots of different genres. In making music, I don't think of genre like, "I want to do this, because I'm going use that country music sound; I'm going use that hip-hop sound; I'm going use that acoustic [sound]." It's just making music. So now that I've traveled a lot more since I did Acoustic Soul, I'm sure that different sounds will come into place, because I have been exposed to it and I like it. But it's not so much of a conscience effort. It's mind and spirited. You know, we're humans.
I've always described my taste in fashion and music as being very eclectic and uniquely based off my feelings that day. That's the wonderful thing about style. You can be whatever you want to be. You can describe yourself however you want to describe yourself.
At first people thought I was really arrogant and a snob about music because I'm so intense about my production and sound, and because they knew I didn't like new music so much.
Their eagerness for the big-band music and their ability to grasp the essence of it made me realize that today's generation has not been properly exposed to the big-band sound.
I brought the music out to L.A., and the producer Tommy LaPuma heard it and he said - "Man, I love it. Let's do it. Let's record it." I said, "Okay, where's the band?" He said, "We don't have a band. We want it to sound exactly like your demo." I said, "Well, I played all the instruments on the demo." You do that when you're making demos. You got your guitar, you got your sax. He said, "Well, I want it to sound just like that, so get all your instruments out here." So I ended up playing all the instruments.
When I was coming up in Miami, the music in the city at the time sounded completely different. I loved it, but it just wasn't the type of music I wanted to make. I wanted my wordplay to be more sophisticated. I wanted the sound to be more lush. I wanted my music to sound like who I was and aspired to be - boss.
You write a song; you know what you want it to sound like. With a band like ours, it's more about the collective. It's important everyone feels expressed and represented.
Once you find your own sound, you find the strength and courage to stay true to that. Keep going even in moments when you're not blazing on fire and relevant with everyone around you. It's because you love to make music. It's making sure that the music isn't about the technology and tools, but truly about the music. Because that's how humanity and the soul are communicated. The soul is the true tool.
I had always wanted to make music on a big scale but never knew how it was going happen - until I saw a band in Oslo called Bridges. I was stunned. They had everything. The only thing they didn't have was me. I knew I needed to join, not for my own sake but for the band's. I knew I was a necessary ingredient.
My first year making music was very experimental. I was trying to find my sound. My second year, I was more in my element. I knew what type of production I wanted to go over and the topics I wanted to address.
I think it's challenging trying to describe my sound. Not because I'm making some experimental martian music, but because it's a little broader. The things that you've heard are only fragments and small fractions of what you're going to hear.
Everyone thinks because you're from the south you know everyone down there, but it's not like that; I never knew nothing about no Mississippi.
She [Joni Mitchell] wanted to have that (jazz) element in her music. Of course, when she heard Jaco's [Jaco Pastorius'] music and met him, that floored her -- really grabbed her. She decided that Wayne Shorter was really conducive to her music. She would speak metaphorically about things. "I want this to sound like a taxicab driver, or a taxi in New York," or "I want this to sound like a telephone ringing." She would speak to musicians like that, and we really tuned into what she would want our music to be.
The nature of music fandom and music fans is that, very often, they fall in love with a band or a particular artist, and they really would like... I'm talking generally; that's not everyone. But a vast majority of the fan base would prefer the band to keep making the same record and the same style of music over and over again.
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