A Quote by Travis Stewart

A big reason I wanted to move [from North Carolina] to New York was to get rid of my car. But honestly, I miss just riding around the hood and having some friends get blunted and playing music for them.
Sometimes people ask me to do stuff in New York, like "Can you read at this thing?" And I say, "Nooo, I can't just get on a plane with these two screaming children - I can't just get rid of them on such short notice and take vacation and fly over to New York."
I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear.
I always considered myself a songwriter, but I didn't move to New York with plans of doing that; it just sort of happened. Everyone thinks that I moved to New York strictly to play music, but I totally just happened to fall into playing with Woods, and it all got started from there. I just went to New York to hang out.
Shortly thereafter, some friends encouraged me to try out for the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant. To my surprise, I won - and was sent to New York City to compete nationally.
Having great friends in New York is like having great friends on an expedition into Darkest Africa in the early 19th century. You need them. And you need sponsorship on a daily basis. I have a painter friend here who says, 'I need two compliments a day just to break even.' And we gave them to each other, and we got them - and honestly got them.
I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom's family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car - it was the late sixties - and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.
When I arrived in New York, I was at the Drake hotel for five years; so, yeah, I really miss hotels. It's like having friends stay at your home. Every day you get to treat them, not only to dinner, but for breakfast, and everything throughout the day.
I didn't want to be driving to work everyday and sending out my Starbucks order. I didn't want to be in New York or L.A. I wanted to have space and I wanted to be in a remote place where all of us could just be ourselves and not worry about anyone trying to listen in or get in on that. I wanted to just be comfortable. I feel like being in a big city - as much as I find New York, in particular, very inspiring in a lot of ways - can also be claustrophobic.
I love L.A. - don't get me wrong. But I miss everything about New York. I don't eat cheese, but I miss the smell of pizza in the city. I'm a really big fan of Latino food. I want to go back home and have some good arroz con pollo.
I went to college in North Carolina, and that's how I learned how to play music. I learned how to play guitar when I was 12, and I was always in bands, but the first time I ever started writing my own music was being surrounded by a lot of songwriter friends in North Carolina.
The thing about New York is you can leave your house without a plan and find the day. You can't do that in Los Angeles. You need to get in your car, all this, you can't just drive around like a lunatic. In New York, you can literally walk outside, and wind up anywhere.
With the accent, it's an internal dialogue that Southerners have with themselves. We kind of carry around that shame, that feeling of being inferior to the North. I think I did lose some of the accent for a while. Because when I was a graduate student, I was terrified at having to get up in front of a roomful of smart New York kids.
If you think about computing, there isn't just one way to compute, just like there's not just one way to move around. You can have shoes, you can have a car, you can have a bicycle, submarine, rocket, plane, train, glider, whatever. Because you have one doesn't mean you get rid of another one... But PCs continue to be important.
Guys don't know it - it is New York. It's different from playing in other states. Playing here in New York is different. No way you get around it.
You can get stuff done in New York that you can't in Los Angeles. If you wanted to get some milk and get your shoes repaired and drop something off at the dry cleaner, that's an all-day adventure in Los Angeles. In New York, you can bang that out in half an hour.
I miss my friends in London, and I really miss New York. But I also miss the stability of staying in one place and being able to just open a drawer if you've run out of sticky tape and chuck a new roll in the holder.
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