Jonny Lang Quotes

Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in.

I've actually had a melody on my guitar since the day I learned how to play it, back when I was 7. And for some reason I can't add lyrics to it.

I've gotten very cynical and kind of anhedonic about all the things I have to do to get to do comedy: all the travel, hotels, and airports.

After I quit my band, I definitely was so full, like I'm so full I could never eat again. I had that kind of feeling where the elements, like the touring stuff, were harder for me and I definitely felt fine not experiencing it again.

Tunings are wonderfully inspiring, and it helps you to write music. If I'm stuck, you know, I change the tuning.

In the '90s, I think I rediscovered my guitar. The Jam was obviously very guitar-based, but in the Style Council I just got really disillusioned with playing the guitar. The further it went on, the less and less I played, to a point where I couldn't pick it up any more.

When I'm not playing music, certainly the last thing I want to do is listen to music!

Being in a band was so fun and exciting, but I was just kind of focusing more on performance and wasn't really writing the songs - I didn't really think I had a voice.

When you're a touring musician, you're always turning over new rocks, and there's always a certain level of tension in your life. The music business, and the travel that comes with it, is stressful, challenging, redundant, exhausting, exciting, and often very depressing.

I'll hear a phrase around me that someone says... I'll write it down in my notebook, and as soon as I'll sit down with my guitar, I'll come up with the rest of the arrangement there.

Touring is a rough thing. You don't have any time to look around or stop and think if what you're doing is making you happy. The more you tour, the better the band gets, and you get caught up in a lot more things than just traveling.

I got really sick of playing just, like, 'Bop-bop-bop-bada-bop-bop-bada-rapa-pah.' Just playing that 190-beats-per-minute punk-rock songs, I didn't feel it anymore. And I always loved melody - when you looked back on those early records, there's always a hook buried in there somewhere.

I describe my projects using colors because it's the best way to describe 'em. I would say that 'Moon Shoes' was way more colorful than a lot of my other music, just because I was pulling from so many different places. Imagine learning how to talk for the first time, and you're just saying everything.

I panic when we're on tour and feel the world can leave you behind. When we finish touring, I feel like I'm running to catch up and find out what's been happening.

It's gotta feel natural. I'm always into that, and after awhile, if I am working on a song too long and trying to make something out of it that it's not... it's best just to stop and move on.

I'll never forget when I heard Steve Morse and the Dixie Dregs for the first time. I was just blown away, and it changed my whole approach to guitar.

Being in Pentatonix, we basically toured year round, so it was tough to just get a break.

Just based on the primary adage of the necessity breeding innovation, it was just like 'Well, what makes me the guitar player that I am?' and I feel like I listen to so much different music, and I'm a student of so many genres of music, and I feel like it's fun to apply those things and anything super applicable to any type of music.

When I wasn't touring I'd be really down, then suddenly after a few weeks of crazy travelling - America, a double headline with Ray Davies in Denmark, TV shows here and just partying... Suddenly I had an acute psychotic breakdown.

I was really into metal when I was growing up. It was just something I thought I could do and wanted to try.

I didn't even learn to play guitar until the movie 'Walk Hard,' which is probably fortunate because maybe I would have pursued it, and that would have been a waste of my time.

I think my best songs come from me sitting at a piano, bashing my head against a brick wall for hours and hours on end to get one good melody.

I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.

When I made the first album, I was 24, and at that age, you have nothing to say. I just played the music I loved and tried to do it justice.

The album 'Physicist,' I erased all the work that I had done halfway through. I think that's probably why that contributed to that album being sort of sub-par for me, just because by the time I had to go back and do it, I was just over it.