Kate Smith Quotes

I came up in Brooklyn singing doo-wop music from the time I was 13 to the time I was 20. That music served a purpose of keeping a lot of people out of trouble, and also it was a passport from one neighborhood to another.

For me, and this may not be everybody, but because I do love country music so much, there's such a feeling of home in Nashville, especially because it's such a small town. You bring up one song, everybody knows who wrote it, everybody knows their mother and what their cell number is, and all of the stories.

The ukulele totally fits that whole hipster community or whatever you want to call it, but then at the same time it works great in nursing homes where senior citizens get together and play, and then as the traditional Hawaiian instrument with people doing the Hula and strumming the ukulele and singing.

I always had a curiosity about Texas. I had a curiosity about small-town life, although, granted, Odessa's not a tiny town.

In Jamaica, the music is recorded for the sound system, not the iPod. It's about experiencing music together, with other people.

I was born and grew up in Palm Springs. It's a great place to grow up, a real small town.

I like to listen to mellow stuff on the road like Travis, as we are constantly surrounded by rock music on tour and so its nice listening to mellow stuff. Obviously back at home I listen to a lot more rock music.

Going to a concert can sometimes be very difficult. It can be a long journey. There's the ticket prices. But when the music goes to the community - not the community coming to the concert - they say, 'Wow! I didn't know that this music was so amazing!'

That's what I love about Nashville and the music community - seeing kids around acoustic music and bluegrass picking parties is the best.

Starting in my teens, I was always standing on the corner near our apartment singing harmony with friends. We'd also go to the park and sing under the bridge near the lake for the echo. When it was cold out, we'd stand in the little heated lobby in the project's administration building, where my mom paid the rent each month.

I used to think that music was like lace upon a garment, nice to have but not necessary. I have come to believe that music is absolutely essential to our community life.

In my childhood there was every year at my old home, Roxborough, or, as it is called in Irish, Cregroostha, a great sheep-shearing that lasted many days. On the last evening there was always a dance for the shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to sit on chairs placed on a corn-bin to make music for the dance.

I lived in Minnesota in a small town.

I grew up in a very small, rural country town, and we didn't really have 'the arts.'

Though Lexington is not a small town, it sometimes feels like one, with circles of acquaintance overlapping once, then again; the person you meet by chance at the library or the pool may turn out to be the best friend of your down-the-street neighbor. Maybe that's why people are so friendly here, so willing to be unhurried.

You feel like you're really a part of a movement when you're singing Journey at a karaoke bar.

I think mobility is very important, not only to discover opportunities elsewhere but at times, also to appreciate better what your home town has. Allahabad, for instance, has the feel of a small, tightly-knit community where everyone participates.

Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world. You meet people at festivals and renew acquaintances year after year.

I like to sing with people, whether they're good or not.

I remember hanging out at Starbucks. There were these older guys who would sit around and play Crosby, Stills & Nash songs. I was just so in love with music. I would just go hang out with them, and I would try to sing and harmonize with them. I didn't even know the songs.

I'm from Louisiana, and that's where I got my start, in Cajun music. There's a huge music scene down there centered around our culture. Those are people that are not making music for a living. They are making music for the fun of it. And I think that's the best way I could have been introduced to music.

I think live music is really, really important. And I think it's very important to do together. It's much more fun to play to music together than the one person listening to their lone iPod Shuffle. I think it's an amazing way to build community and have children do things that are funded that's not a videogame.

There wasn't a lot of live music that you could hear where I came from, which was a small town in southeast Missouri.

Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not galloping past your window on the way to the latest anything. They're living their lives. You do a play, they come and see it and say, 'That's nice', and then they go home.

I go into military communities and do fundraisers and that kind of thing with the band, because I know that the music can help do a lot of things. It can bring communities together, it can raise awareness... and it entertains.