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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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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
Unless
Records
Half
Making
Like
Killing
Record

More quotes by Andrew Bird

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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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Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.
Andrew Bird
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Sometimes the word dictated the melody.
Andrew Bird
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There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.
Andrew Bird
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I put a lot into my records, and I won't release anything I'm not totally thrilled with.
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.
Andrew Bird
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There's always a tension between wanting to write a really concise, instant gratification type song that gets under your skin the first time you hear it, and wanting to really stretch out. I think it's a healthy tension.
Andrew Bird
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There is something comforting about going into a practice room, putting your sheet music on a stand and playing Bach over and over again.
Andrew Bird
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It's not set in stone. I like to keep it rolling and changing, and so I am like, Great, I get to remake my song.
Andrew Bird
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I still kind of believe this absurd line that if you have to write it down, it's not worth remembering.
Andrew Bird
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Sometimes I think I don't have much choice in the matter. It's just what happens, and I'm following my instincts the whole time.
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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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've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.
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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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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The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum.
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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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 problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.
Andrew Bird