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Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research.

Andrew Bird

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Andrew Bird
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: July 11
Fiddler
Film Editor
Guitarist
Jazz Musician
Musician
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Chicago
Illinois
Andrew Wegman Bird
Andrew W. Bird
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More quotes by Andrew Bird

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I finished touring the last record and I started recording new .I never really left the bubble, which is I think a good thing. I was just very focused. Maybe I should have taken a break or something, and not done such a long push.
Andrew Bird
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I've always felt that dark lyrics with dark music is pretty useless. Maybe that's a strong statement - not useless, but for me, it's just boring.
Andrew Bird
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Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. Theyre all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. Theyre tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.
Andrew Bird
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I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.
Andrew Bird
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A day off after a show with no agenda in a foreign city is about the most fertile creative situation I can imagine. Just walking with nothing to do, killing time and hearing the sights and sounds of an unfamiliar place.
Andrew Bird
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Anyway, I'm digressing, but this is just kind of this 10-and-a-half-minute, ambient - you hear cicadas and birds and the wind outside and crickets as I'm swelling the piece. I could never do that on a pop record. I could, but why would I want to be agitating?
Andrew Bird
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The instrumental record is a bit subtler. It's the kind of stuff on sound check, when I first pick up my violin and start to play, the kind of melodies that just pour out of me. Some of them sound very classical. Some of them sound experimental, polyrhythmic loops that I make.
Andrew Bird
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When I start asking my friends, What do you think this means? And it leads to way more interesting conversations than what it actually ends up meaning in the dictionary. Like apocryphal, for instance.
Andrew Bird
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What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.
Andrew Bird
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The earth almost looks like it's packed down and dense from so many feet treading over it.
Andrew Bird
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Most records, you build from the drums and bass up. This one, we started with the vocals in Nashville and recorded them live with just the guitars and tried to make that complete and lovely-sounding without any adornment at all. I really wanted to get something with the vocal that I've never gotten before Armchair Apocrypha.
Andrew Bird
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Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.
Andrew Bird
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No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness.
Andrew Bird
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I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.
Andrew Bird
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The way I work, I'm not a confessional singer-songwriter.
Andrew Bird
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Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.
Andrew Bird
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The weirdest time is when I'm having to explain myself all day to journalists, and then I don't perform, so there's no release, just a lot of self-consciousness. Then what do you do with that at the end of the day? How do you release your brain from talking about yourself all day?
Andrew Bird
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I'm just trying to get my body in shape so that I can handle it. It's a very physically demanding thing. I've been doing it for 16 years, so I know what I'm going into now. I'm trying to stay calm and not panic.
Andrew Bird
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I don't like to disappear between records. I like to play shows while I'm making the record.
Andrew Bird
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I have the barn, it's just kind of like a studio. Almost all artists have la studio to work in, and that's really what it is. A place to get away. I'll spend maybe four days out there if I can, just completely immersed - like where I don't bathe or brush my teeth for a few days, just get up and make coffee and experiment until the sun goes down.
Andrew Bird