Kevin Morby Quotes

For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.

Honest, I listen to classical mostly. It keeps my mind fresh to write rock songs.

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.

I keep this crazy notebook of song ideas.

I've always wanted to make music like people write plays, so I was inspired by writers as much as musicians.

But I did that, and I created another blues scene, another something I can sing about.

I make up stories in my head all the time, but I've never written them down. But I write a lot of story songs. Any song I'm singing, I sort of see it like a movie in my head. That's why a lot of times I close my eyes when I'm singing.

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

I love songs but am inhibited to have my characters burst out to express themselves through songs. I use the route of using old songs at the right places.

A lot of our songs are based in reality but imagined or using fictional characters as a way to write about something. I think inspiration comes from anything and everything, and it's filtered through our brains, and it comes out sounding like our band.

I try to imagine what the greatest song I could ever write would sound like, and then try to do it.

I came up with a lot of characters when I was growing up that were just creative outlets, and then, at one point, I came across Gus Dapperton in the back of my head when I was making music.

When I write music, I know a lot of artists like Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran tend to write from personal experience. I write from personal experience, of course, but I don't limit myself to that.

When I was writing 'Shotgun,' it's one of the first songs that's come to me as an image.

I feel like songwriting is an experiment in empathy.

I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction.

In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

When I recorded my solo album, 'Keep It Hid,' in 2008, I'd gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.

It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.

Drawing and visual pursuits were first. Music came and found me in a way. Really, what it's about is creative problem solving, and music is a lot more an expression of that than painting is for me.

People say all kinds of things about the ingredients of songs. But you know they are a kind of magic, in the sense that they may easily include a stain on your bedroom wall... and a variety of mis-recollections. And then you name it after a girl's name that you just made up.