A Quote by Mike McCready

My mind has always kind of operated with this band like it's gonna be over tomorrow. — © Mike McCready
My mind has always kind of operated with this band like it's gonna be over tomorrow.
I think a band - even a band that's been around as long as the Rolling Stones - I think that's still the formula. You know you're gonna get those songs, and you don't mind sitting through the ones that you maybe don't know very well because you know they're not gonna let you down - they're not gonna mess with you. And I kind of feel the same way about the way I structure my shows.
I was 21, and I was like, "Man, am I really gonna start over and try this whole thing over again? Do I want to start over and be in a rock band again and try to act like a 17-year-old for as long as I can?" Because that was what I was doing with Simon Dawes band. I decided that if I was going to go on playing music, I was going to try and work on it. So I got into Leonard Cohen and Will Oldham, guys that really inspired me not only as songwriters but also through their music as people, and that's kind of what the shift was for me.
What am I gonna do to be successful and provide for my family? I was like, I want to play basketball, I love basketball, but I'm too short. I'm not gonna cooperate in school... Boxing. I always found boxing, it always came back to boxing, boxing, boxing. Boxing, this is it, this is gonna be the thing gonna take me over the the top.
I have an abdominal hernia which I tore and had operated on, and it's not the easiest thing in the world to get over. I'm gonna go on down the road, but hopefully I can get over the damn thing.
We didn't say, 'Hey, we're gonna pick a bunch of cover songs,' or, 'We're gonna write an original song that has to sound like this, because we're a metal band, so we're gonna cover some metal songs.' We did the opposite. We just said, 'We're gonna have fun with these songs, and we're gonna try different things.'
You know somethin', man? Some day I'm gonna be walkin' up the street one way and you're gonna be comin' down the other way, and we're gonna pass each other and I'm gonna say 'Hello, best white band in the world' and you're gonna say 'Hello, best colored band in the world.
Oh, no. I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there's a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can't simply say, oh, like, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay." It's like saying, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black."
There's always a Van der Graaf audience that wants to hear the band's sound. And totally fair enough. Why not? It's a band. You like the band, you like the band.
We became a band that was kind of a big band, kind of a band that quite uncool people listen to, people a lot like me. I've realized that's a much more beautiful fate than the plan I had.
I know that the gift that God gave me isn't gonna just wither up and die unless I let it die, so it's a matter of me having the faith that it's gonna come out. Whether or not the public's gonna like it is another story. But I think as long as I keep changing and sticking to what I really love - and the same goes for Steven and the other guys in the band - then people are gonna like it.
I just remember music always being a part of my life. I was never like, "I'm gonna be a rock star," or "I'm gonna be in a band." It was more "I just play piano, and I'm always going to play piano. That's who I am and that's cool." I think music became so ingrained in me that it was not even my choice.
Being a guitarist was scary, honestly, as a girl in Nashville. It just felt like no one was gonna ask me to be in a band and play guitar, like I never was gonna get asked to do that.
We always operated within a sense of community not just about the band. It's important to the way we define ourselves. It's the entire world in which we operate.
As a band, we always took a really long time to make records, so unfortunately, we got into that habit of, like, 'We'll work on it tomorrow.'
We've always been kind of an underground band in a way that had the respect of our peers on the road. I like to say we're the world's most famous opening act because we've opened for every huge band on the planet.
I'm gonna design my own fleet of trailers. No! I'm gonna record an album like Jennifer Lopez. It'll be an acoustic version of K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Then maybe I'll design a line of clothes like Puff Daddy, but all in synthetic fur.
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