A Quote by Richard Dawson

I've never stopped working on songs and practising singing and guitar. — © Richard Dawson
I've never stopped working on songs and practising singing and guitar.
I love singing. I have spent as much of my life trying to improve my singing as I have practising guitar.
I was a singing guitar player as a kid, and I found it really embarrassing, so I stopped singing and became a drummer.
Then the musical instruments appeared. Dad’s snare drum from the house, Henry’s guitar from his car, Adam’s spare guitar from my room. Everyone was jamming together, singing songs: Dad’s songs, Adam’s songs, old Clash songs, old Wipers songs. Teddy was dancing around, the blond of his hair reflecting the golden flames. I remember watching it all and getting that tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.
When they're singing the guitar lines of songs in South America? Never heard that before. And in Canada, when they're singing all of the lyrics to every song - that blows me away. I don't know all the lyrics to every song.
I never stopped grinding. I never stopped hustling. I never stopped working. I just kept moving. It has nothing to do with the money or anything like that. It's just that I love music.
For me, the guitar was just a tool to make songs. I started when I was 10 - I learned what I had to learn to get my ideas across. I always felt I was a weak guitar player, but now I realize with the finger-picking stuff, I actually know how to do what I do with my songs, but I couldn't step in and be an overall guitar player. But my guitar playing has always been driven by the need to write songs.
I always try, when I'm singing songs, to interpret them the way that I would've arranged them. I think about the melody first, and then I pull out my guitar and start singing it.
I never took singing lessons. I guess, I feel comfortable with it, but I do not feel like a singer. I never want to sing without a guitar in my hand. I consider myself more of a songwriter, rather than a singer. I could never be in a wedding band and just sing Marvin Gaye songs.
I suppose ever since I was about 14, I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," and I remember thinking, "how do you possibly write songs like that?" I remember starting to try and write songs around that age, but just sitting around with an acoustic guitar, and try to come up with ideas for songs, and that's just what I've done ever since. I just never really stopped doing that, I suppose.
At some point, I had to make a decision: I could practice more and become a really great guitar player or I could work on writing better songs. There are only so many hours in the day, and I found writing songs more fulfilling than working on becoming this virtuoso guitar player.
I love making people sing. I love group singing, sacred harp singing, choral singing, recordings of people singing sea shanties, work songs, prison songs - how people just sang to get through things.
I have no idea how I do anything. I never have. You know I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call "Don McLean" when I was probably in high school. And I have been doing this for 40 years, adding songs and writing things, cobbling together albums, doing live things, you know, albums and tours. And then I have records on the charts. I have no idea how this happened.
However, it [singing] wasn't until halfway through high school that it dawned on me that singing wasn't just a hobby, it was something I had a growing need for in my life, and that was about when I adopted the neglected guitar I found under our piano and started singing about all the things I could never say.
I like the audience to be engaged with the numbers I am singing and do not repeat my songs at any of my concerts. There are thousands of songs that I have lent my voice to with so many other singers, so why bore my audience by singing the same songs?
I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an' my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.
When I'm not touring, I sing at home, either at the piano or I'll pick up my guitar, singing old Buck Owens songs.
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