I couldn't wait to grow a mustache. I stopped shaving my upper lip the day I graduated from high school.
There's always a personal satisfaction in writing a song by yourself. You get the inspiration, and see it through, and you're done. It's focused and very personal.
The decline of the major labels has changed the audience. They aren't force-fed by a system any more. They can make their own decisions.
When you really can't affect something, you almost don't wanna wish too hard, because it's just frustrating.
I don't do any songs that I'm sick of now - sometimes even songs that I request. If I'm sick of 'em I don't do 'em even for myself.
I think, because I'm an artist, part of my job is to be a barometer, an antenna. It's in the air and it resonates with a lot of people to lighten up.
Definitely I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell, and I think she is a wonderful writer, so she is probably part of me.
I think I'm different from a lot of singer-songwriters because some of my favorite singer-songwriters told stories. Like John Prine.
I always did go against the singer-songwriter form. I think I've always had a lot of storytelling songs.
I'm not knocking the poor homosexual, I'm not. They need salvation just like anybody else.
I had a very unusual contract. Most artists actually pay for their record dates and it comes out of their royalties. I paid for nothing.
I take smack because I enjoy it. I enjoy all it makes me feel. I don't do it to be in with the in crowd. I can rock out with it.
I was in Sweden for 10 days. They put me on the front page of the daily papers eight days in a row. I did nothing to warrant any of the attention. It was ridiculous.
We get picked up in these Rolls Royces and get three miles down the highway and five cop cars pull us over.
I really have to be in a specific headspace to even begin to illuminate an idea that would create another Bon Iver record, and I'm just not there.
A lot of Texans go up to New York and stay there forever. If there are any two places with more individual characters, I don't know them.
The dirty laundry of our confessed sin belongs in the Lord’s laundry hamper; for there He will toss them like mismatched socks as far as the east is from the west.
Guitar solos bore the hell out of me. Only a few guitarists interest me, and it's not about the solos they play, it's about the grooves they create.
I knew people liked me on 'American Idol,' but I didn't think they'd care to come see me sing at my own show.
I grew up in Germany for a little while, and all my German friends said that Seattle, weather and energy-wise, is a lot like West Germany. It's true.
And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West.
