I'm big on simplicity. I'm not too much on all the extra instruments.
Our first album was kind of simple, but it had that fire, that energy that we have to have.
Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.
Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal.
Country music is completely punk-rock. It's the original punk-rock.
I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing.
Religion! O Diabole! Fie, I am asham'd, however that I seem, To think a word of such simple sound, Of such great matter should be made the ground.
Ever since I've ever heard music, I thought it should be very clean, very precise - as clean as possible, anyway, and more or less tuned to people. Something they could understand, something that was beautiful, you know?
Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down.
Tintinnabulation is like this. Here I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence comfort me.
Folk is bare bones music.
I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.
The idea to do the album only on keyboards kind of happened by accident. I was quite happy with the sound and felt it really didn't need more instruments, so I didn't use them.
You know, as I'm progressing with my sound, I just realize when you got a simple sound with crazy percussion in the beats, it makes it. It kinda shapes my sound when it comes to what makes a Tay Keith beat.
When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.
I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.
I heard Skip James, and it pierced me. It felt like punk rock to me, real and raw. It was just one guitar, so simple yet so much expression. I wanted to feel and express like that, to take the shortest path to get to an emotion.
I feel 'Love Letters' has been part of a longer journey towards a very simple, international sound in which the sitar is no longer exotic or classical, but simply a tool of expression when juxtaposed with the voice and cross-genre elements.
