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I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.

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
Something
Okay
Like
Challenges
Create
Whatever
Song
Littles
Little
Greek
Work
Somehow

More quotes by Andrew Bird

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I've literally opened it up to suggestions and it's totally chaotic and kind of a bad idea. You don't need the actual feedback to get a sense. When you're showing a song for the first time, people can feel that newness.
Andrew Bird
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Some of your best songs come from a desperate attempt to escape, so sitting in an airport for hours I can just start pulling out little fragments of songs from my head. A lot of times a melody will just occur to me and be my companion for a couple of months.
Andrew Bird
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People who are thinking about your music almost as much as you are, that almost never happens.
Andrew Bird
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I still play solo shows. And some of those shows are still some of the best, most gratifying shows.
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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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The real drag is trying to fly from country to country, day of show, with all your gear. You get hassled all the time. It's hard trying to keep it together.
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.
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If you take a little time, let's say three weeks off, after recording a song, and you listen to it every other day, you're just going to know eventually.
Andrew Bird
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I didn't have the patience for the research, or anything like that. I just like how it sets the imagination off. It's just an area that's very fertile for great words. Great metaphors, potentially.
Andrew Bird
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There's a lot of interesting words, nomenclatures, in science.
Andrew Bird
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I'm coming from a place that's more experimental and indulgent already, so for the last 10 years, it's been more like, How can I defend my own sensibilities by writing a nugget of a little catchy pop song? That's how I'm stretching myself, by writing something really simple.
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The orchestra's an amazing instrument, but I don't want to just arrange my songs for it. I think that might be kind of boring and a little bit overdramatic, perhaps. I'm still just having too much fun doing it my way, for the time being.
Andrew Bird
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There's always that struggle between me wanting to keep [song] new and fresh and then be - I can never get with pop songs being so repetitive.
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Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.
Andrew Bird
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The anti-aging advert that I would like to see is a baby covered in cream saying, 'Aah, I've used too much'
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It's like you don't know you're making a record unless you're half-killing yourself.
Andrew Bird
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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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I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.
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When I'm onstage, I'm completely comfortable, and I feel very vital and alive.
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