I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.
I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last.
I like the idea of an eclectic approach, incorporating jazz with other forms and other genres of music.
The way that I got involved with microtonal music was, frankly, through jazz.
Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.
My music isn't anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock'n'roll, and it has an urgency to it.
Jazz, rock and roll, movies and comics are the culture of America.
I would say that jazz is my own language.
Things began to go wrong when I was seventeen. My band’s twenty-year-old lead guitarist earned seven years in jail for a drug-fuelled spree of violence. The other band members were quick to let go of their musical dreams, but I never did. They did ...
[while standing at the entrance to the Triple Rock church watching the service with much dancing and Hallelujah choruses, a heavenly light shines down on Jake and he has an epiphany] Jake: The band? The band. Reverend Cleophus James: DO YOU SEE THE L...
When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He’s like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone’s pain. If Rick thinks so...
It comforts me to think that if we are created beings the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality and so i...
There are more guys than girls in jazz. Next-to-no lady trumpeters (oh, there are a few) but it doesn't matter because, for me, jazz trumpet is all about one guy Miles Davis. He made this famous album in 1959 called Kind of Blue which is kind of, alw...
How remote we were too from the crazy musicians who arrived on a blustery fall day with the idea that, since this was a financial center, there would be a rain of coins from the tall buildings in response to their trumpet, guitar, and bass fiddle. Th...
Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet and the singer comes in and they ship the tape somewhere. Well, none of the musicians have played toge...
I tried to sing 'What's Going On' with Amy Winehouse once at an old cinema in the West End. There was a funk band that had members of both of our bands playing in it, but it was the worst kind of place to sing bad karaoke because everyone there was a...
I want to start a band called the Band-Aids. Free coffee for all who come to our show. We’d perform for the deaf and the asleep.
I’m a one-man show. I need to start a band. You wanna join? Too bad! What about one-man band don’t you understand?
James, that's a bad situation. I'm not saying it's not repairable, but it's pretty far. When you go from being in one of the best bands in the world to some cover band... as far as I'm concerned, he was playing down at the pub.
A guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.
After moving to England I did some recording and eventually formed an English band, this was together for quite a few years with only a keyboard replacement. The band had no name, just my name.
