Russ Quotes

After I left the Pumpkins, I went home and just sat around. I have a studio in my basement, and I found myself writing all these songs, just taking advantage of the relaxed situation. I wrote about 30 songs in about 30 days.

I try never to focus on the radio, just find great songs, find emotion and just write the best songs you can. I think when you get fixated on trying to do something too accurate, it becomes more washed out and less what you intended it to be. So I think each time the challenge for me is to try and reinvent a little bit.

If there's a song where there's a possibility of guitar stuff that would be fun to listen to, go for it. Don't worry about what anybody thinks.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

I don't have to sit around and wait for the next movie to come along, I can go out and sing.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is.

Coming to Nashville has been so motivating and inspirational. Just watching people live and breathe their music and create something that they can feel from start to finish.

There are always new things to experience, internalize then write about. This process is ongoing with me. It never stops. The opportunity to reach new audiences with all of the music that we have made is thrilling.

Music is supposed to be inspired.

Ed Sheeran wrote his songs, so I wanted to write my own songs.

I'll write songs wherever I am.

I've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.

If you don't have a great chorus, write a good bridge first. I often do that and find I write good bridges.

We've always tried to inspire ourselves, so to speak. In the beginning, that could mean just hearing your own songs played back to you for the very first time.

I remember when I did 'Live SheckWes, Die SheckWes,' and when I did 'Mo Bamba,' I one-taked those because it came from my heart.

I always dreamed, when I started writing music, to find a way of immersing yourself in it.

When I first started writing songs, I looked around at the bands that were making it, and they all had the original material. Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Stones - everybody was writing their own songs. That's the way that you established your own identity.

I wanted to create a more spontaneous outlet for my songwriting to have alongside the more long-winded process of making an album. I wanted to have some fun.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that's what I got back to.

Usually I go to the studio to write lyrics and compose music. I try to be a dad as much as possible at home.

I'm definitely using different parts of myself, but I think when it comes down to words and melodies, I can't really force anything too much.

I had all the material for a long time, but I was just too busy. Sometimes we'd sit around at home and sing some of these songs at family things, and everyone always said I should record them.

I always say that I'm at my best when there's no example of what the character is supposed to be. I thrive when there's not much and I have to create it.

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.