Cass McCombs Quotes

There might be two or three songs I'm trying out. I've been singing these songs (on the new album) in the studio, but I haven't really done them live. It's intimate to sing them in a studio. Now, I've got to be on a stage and be in front of a lot of people.

I feel like maybe I get more nervous when I'm singing. One, it's live. Two, there's a lot of people watching. And three, you have to make sure you get the right notes and everything.

But I love singing live. Nothing beats the feeling of going out on stage and going, 'I can really sing.'

Playing and singing at the same time is pretty cool, but sometimes it's difficult to know when you can just really let go a bit because you've got to get back to bloody microphone and sing some stuff.

I love playing live, I don't like studios all that much. I need the reaction of the audience.

When you have a live performance, you're going to be pitchy here and there, unless you have perfect pitch.

It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.

Like when I'm singing live I can't hear myself. I'm just listening to the rest of the band. To listen to my voice, it doesn't even feel like it's me.

But I was singing loud, and most singers weren't singing loud.

My version of lip-synching is singing full-out with the track.

For me, doing a show, the excitement of singing live, and the possibility that you're not gonna be perfect - that's the thrill of it.

I want to play in a place people want to hear me.

I love playing in front of people. I feel powerful, 'cause I don't have to really say anything - I'm just singing.

I've always been singing. Since day one. I started doing musical theater and you have to sing in musical theater and so that's where I got most of my training. So singing on stage, you just inevitably, when you're around other vocal artists, you get better at singing.

And being away and not performing for a long time and really connecting with my audience for a long time, I have a great responsibility to myself and to them to do it exactly the way the process was when I was young.

I'm very proud of my records, but my most natural creative tendencies have been in live performing. There's a beautiful element to recording and making records, but I've always felt a little shy with it.

I feel like I am one of those artists that, thank god, can sing live.

The studio work is the nasty, tedious, hard and nerve-wracking part, interrupted by moments of exhilaration. Playing live is the chance to actually have some fun and get on a stage.

Playing live is such a total visceral experience, and really, as a musician, you're trained from the beginning to be a live performer.

The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.

I would love to do much more singing; it's just one of those things where I can't quite describe what it feels like when you're standing in front of a forty piece orchestra, and there's nothing between you and an audience but a microphone. It's like strapping yourself to a locomotive, and I love it.

And I think it's a real challenge to be up there sometimes with only a keyboard if they don't have a grand piano... and to try to win people over that way. It's really hard.

There is nothing to compare with the instantaneous feedback a singer gets from the people sitting in front of him. That is where it all comes together - all the rehearsing and working to get everything just exactly right.

You don't really know a song until you play it live.

When you are in the studio, you don't have anybody to feed off of; meanwhile, when you are playing live, you interact with people and you feel the energy in the room. When the crowd is going crazy, that definitely impacts your vocal performance. I prefer to sing live.