Quotes by Leo Kottke

About Leo Kottke:

Leo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He overcame a series of personal obstacles, including partial loss of hearing and a nearly career-ending bout with tendon damage in his right hand to emerge as a widely recognized master of his instrument. He currently resides in the Minneapolis area with his family.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It's true that the more you put in the more you get out and that has to be there I think, If you aren't really hooked on your instrument this job would be a hell on earth but if you are, it's the best.

Leo Kottke

I was taking a nose dive somewhere between eleven and twelve because my sister had died and I was practicing something that siblings do which is follow in their footsteps and die as well.

Leo Kottke

I was two and a half and my folks would put it on the record player and I would run around the house screaming, but I haven't been that hip since.

Leo Kottke

We had a day off here yesterday and I just sat in my room and played.

Leo Kottke

I had been playing single note instruments and I wanted to hear a guitar played as a piano.

Leo Kottke

It was almost two years after I left Capital that I put out the first one on Chrysalis and that was really instructive because it was no better in particular than any other record I'd done.

Leo Kottke

It was a kind of paralysis you would get from tendonitis and I would last about five to ten minutes into the set and it would set in and I really couldn't play.

Leo Kottke

I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.

Leo Kottke

I think that open tunings are a trap really because it's really hard not to sound like an open tuning when your using one and that gets old as well as what you learn in one open tuning is going to stay there.

Leo Kottke

It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes.

Leo Kottke

You can't really tell what the audience wants but you can tell what will keep everybodies attention in the same place.

Leo Kottke

I would say that if you don't feel like talking to the crowd something is wrong and if you force yourself to talk to them things will happen and to that extent things aren't choreographed.

Leo Kottke

There are nights when you can feel stale because you've fallen into a pattern by touring too much, but it's easy to get out of it by deliberately getting in trouble and playing yourself into a corner to then see if you can get out of it.

Leo Kottke

I will literally open my mouth not knowing what is coming out.

Leo Kottke

I do have a library of events I can talk about and I always expect to find a different point of view on it so even if I talk about the same event in the same town it's fresh.

Leo Kottke

I seem to find different material every four to six months and I frequently forget it which is a shame because it would be nice to have a bigger library.

Leo Kottke

Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is not to try too hard.

Leo Kottke

When a record company looks at me I'm very hard to market, I don't really fit anywhere, It's hard to get me on the air, and I'm hard to demography, but! because of that I'm not subject to trends like you pointed out.

Leo Kottke

I'm not subject to their rise and fall because I'm not accepted by them, so I have my own little curve going on. A lot of it is because of how much I play, I think I connect like when all you had was Vaudeville, I think I have an audience by performi...

Leo Kottke

I am evidence that you don't have to sell a lot of records or succeed in the usual way to have a big audience and a job.

Leo Kottke

Author Bio

  • NameLeo Kottke
  • DescriptionAmerican guitarist and singer
  • BornSeptember 11, 1945
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionSinger