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.
I wasn't thinking of competing with any artists as such, I was more thinking of being among them, and sharing thoughts with them; like sharing views, ideas, etc.
Well, maybe it's because of the rumors they had going around, you know, they had some rumors about Dennis Brown was in the hospital and all that. Well, that is all bull!
Sometimes that is why you might even stay in the bathroom for even half an hour, making that water running all over, just singing.
So I did 'Something Happened on the Way to Heaven' and the original version is a ballad. The original Phil record is uptempo but we slowed it down and made it a ballad.
When I first heard that song, it was a ballad but it had a lot more. It felt like a gospel song when I first heard it and it just moved me.
