Most of my records are very dense, composition-heavy, and there's bits of different kinds of music like an acoustic ballad, instrumental trio pieces, and vocal tracks.
I suppose ever since I was about 14, I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," and I remember thinking, "how do you possibly write songs like that?" I remember starting to try and write songs around that age, but just sitting around with an acoustic guitar, and try to come up with ideas for songs, and that's just what I've done ever since. I just never really stopped doing that, I suppose.
The mall tour was right off of my second record, before it came out. It was very different. I did an acoustic performance every day in a different mall! One interesting thing I remember is playing 'My Happy Ending' a lot, and that song was so new that I remember getting emotional.
There was this big skiffle craze happening for a while in England. . . . Everybody was in a skiffle group. . All you needed was an acoustic Guitar, a washboard with thimbles for percussion, and a tea-chest- you know, the ones they used to ship tea from India- and you just put a broom handle on it and a bit of string, and you had a bass. . you only needed two chords; Jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing. And I think that's basically where i've always been at. I'm just a skiffler, you know. Now I do posh skiffle, that's all it is.
I still prefer to hear [Bob] Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.
Artie travels all the time. The rehearsals were just miserable. Artie and I fought all the time. He didn't want to do the show with my band; he just wanted me on acoustic guitar.
I've always toured solo acoustic.
An acoustic show is all about you, and any little nuance or mistake is amplified.
I try not to punish the audience by making them listen to too much acoustic guitar.
In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot.
I wanted to try to make songs that worked as songs, not just as productions. People wanted me to do a solo acoustic session, they were like "Can you play song on the piano?" and I was like "Not really. It doesn't really work. " I wanted to write songs that would work in a variation of instrumentation.
We think the problem is out there, when the problem is really in here - who we are and how we experience the world around us. The acoustic ecologist listens, as the primary sense, to the world around us, and I believe that they have a significant contribution to make to all environmental groups who think that they're solving environmental problems, when we're actually all on a spiritual pilgrimage.
How do I explain Neil Young? Great question! I explain Neil Young as, I would kill to see his acoustic shows.
To me, there's never been a difference between electronic and acoustic. I've always had this idea that electricity is another element like wind or fire or water.
On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.
Every one of the songs was based around picking an acoustic guitar. That was part of the concept from the beginning, that the tempos were going to go from slow to almost mid-tempo.
My grandfather gave me my first guitar, an old acoustic with palm trees and dancing girls painted on it
If you play "I Don't Want To Know" by Fleetwood Mac loud enough -- you can hear Lindsey Buckingham's fingers sliding down the strings of his acoustic guitar. . . . And we were convinced that this was the definitive illustration of what we both loved about music; we loved hearing the INSIDE of a song.
I've always loved acoustic music because I've always loved to hear someone's words or just watch them and just get into them. The distancing thing about rock is it's so assaulting.
My sound is super hybrid; the acoustic sounds are there and the electronic sounds are there.
