 LA.com 9/27/07
Huffington Post 9/27/07
The Guardian 8/3/07
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What you believe affects everything you do. Being spiritual is about appreciating life. After all, life is a finite thing. After life there might be someplace else to go ... (but) being alive in the moment is being spiritual.
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I still don't know what I do, not really. It just happens.
HMVchoice 7/21/07
icWales.co.uk 7/21/07
Philly.com 6/22/07
Properganda 6/21/07
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But six months became a year, then five, then 10. To have been doing this for 40 years feels quite disturbing actually.
I can't quite grasp it and I almost have to think of it in terms of four years because otherwise I think I'd just curl up on the floor and quiver.
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The Patriot News 6/21/07
The Independant 6/1/07
AV Club 6/13/07
SouthTown.com 6/13/07
I still believe music can change the world and will. It's real, and with the media in place, it can still develop a powerful wallop.
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If you're going to write about life, then you might as well dig a bit deeper. And if you do, it's more complicated than a Julie Andrews song. I mean, it's a complex world out there. When you say "I love you" to someone, it's because of or in spite of this or that - the human conditions.
Some days love is rockier than others. It's a lot of conflicting emotions. At the end of it all, we're capable of a lot of affection, but sometimes with a price. There's a lot you have to get through before you get to the good parts.
I'm not cynical about life. I think life is fine and wonderful. But I am cynical about certain superficialities and cliches, including the trite and glossy ways that a lot of music deals with reality.
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I was trying to be sympathetic to the troops. That was also my first interest because I feel for the soldiers who are out there every day putting their lives on the line. That's a terrible situation to be in, a very precarious situation to be in.
FreeTimes.com 6/13/07
Kentucky.com 6/10/07
The Independant 6/1/07
Ents24.com 5/29/07
Uncut 5/07
How can it be
40 years?
It's insane. |
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I think there is a lot of conflict to these new songs -- military conflict, emotional conflict and domestic conflict. There is conflict and, in some cases, resolution. But there is also a kind of sweetness within that conflict -- hence the title of the album.
It's not the kind of business
you retire from, if you can stay healthy.
As long as I can do it, I'd like to do it.
I like football
or ice hockey.
The electric guitar
is a wonderfully nasty instrument
in the wrong hands, and mine
are the wrong hands.
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I'm not a gearhead or guitar fanatic at all. They're just tools to me. They can be lovely tools, and I enjoy them, but I'm not a guitar polisher. I suppose I'm a bit detached from the ownership of a guitar. I think of them as functional things.
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The Internet makes a lot of that possible. Having a loyal fan base is also very useful to keep me operating; people can find your website, and the venues that you're playing at, the merchandise you have for sale, all that kind of stuff. It's great to be able to reach the audience in a more direct way.
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There are tracks that kind of have a bitter sweetness, that deal with lost love or yearning for lovers or those who have died. And on my records, that's all you're gonna get in terms of "sweetness.'
This is not a Julie Andrews record. |
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It's just fiction, but as often seems to happen, you start to meet the characters from the songs. |
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Maui News 11/06
Roanoke Times 11/06
Let's celebrate life instead of allowing it to meander past.
The Hook 10/06
Canada.com 7/06
LA Times 5/7/06
db Magazine 2/06
And they said
I was finished!
Sunday Times 2/12/06
Newsweek 2/10/06
Manchester News 2/2/06
Lack of success is a great thing.
I recommend it to everyone.
The Guardian 1/20/06
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I'm about
life,
life,
life.
If you haven't written a song
for a couple of weeks,
you get itchy,
you start twitching.
I wish I'd never spoken onstage in my life, though, because there's so much mileage in being the tortured poet. I wish I'd done that, but it's too late to start now. I think it would be spotted as a ruse.
Am I satisfied? No.
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I'm not a
mainstream writer.
I am what I am.
I don't play in
one of the popular styles of music.
I don't play white blues or white
soul music.
I'm not Eric Clapton.
I'm not Sting.
Sunday Herald 7/31/05
Times Online 7/30/05
I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing.
In every area I see room for improvement.
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Am I the only one here in black again? Am I the only one filled with Nordic angst?
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Bleak is good!
Happy songs are OK, if it's something you're dancing to, but listen to Julie Andrews all day and it might drive you nuts. |
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I write maybe
16 good songs a year.
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| Being in a rock 'n' roll band you get to meet some real characters. A great pastime in a bus or plane is to recount tales of excess or debauchery. That's part of the fun. |
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| They don't want frills in the way. They don't want the glossy, hi-fi production. They want to hear the squeaks of fingers on strings, and, dare I say, the cock-ups. So that's what they're gonna get. |
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There’s a bit of the suburbs in me that I can’t quite get rid of. |
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Folk rock, who knows or cares?
Innerviews 3/05
Village Idiot 3/05
I'm probably having more fun than a lot of other people.
Get Religion 5/27/04
OC Weekly 5/04
Music Show 4/24/04
I'm always accused of being obsessed with death and doom.
The Age 4/16/04
NPR 11/16/04
Lexington HL 10/26/03
Merrimack River 10/24/03
The Union 10/2/03
Metroactive 10/2/03
Stereophile 10/03
The Guardian 9/16/03
Jam! 8/23/03
Boston Herald 7/18/03
Greenman Review 6/7/03
Toronto Star 5/22/03
I'm not
a rich rock
'n' roll star.
VH1 5/12/03
CNN 5/9/03
Dallas Observer 5/13/03
Riverfront Times 5/7/03
Cucamonga 3/3/03
Roots Music 3/03
OC Weekly 2/28/03
BBC 2/13/03
The Guardian 2/7/03
Paste 1/03
Ottawa Sun 8/23/02
OC Weekly 3/15/02
Prairie Home 3/2/02
Westchester 10/25/01
Austin City Limits 7/2/01
Petersburg Times 5/01
Best of N'Orleans 4/01
AVClub 3/28/01
NZ Herald 3/2/01
Acoustic Guitar 2/01
Dirty Linen 2001
Washington Post 2001
Green Man Review 2001
Baltimore S.A. 12/00
Across the Pond 6/00
Memphis Flyer 3/6/00
I'm an old
vinyl head.
City Paper 10/99
Metroactive 9/1/99
New Times 9/9/99
Launch 8/20/99
CD101 8/1999
Acoustic Guitar 1999
Salon 8/31/99
Rolling Stone 8/9/99
Launch 12/15/97
IMusic Artist Direct 1996
Salon 1996
Metroactive 9/19/96
Music Monitor 1996
Interview 12/94
RockNReel 1992
Innerviews 5/22/91
Trousers Press 6/82
I’ve got seven or eight guitars of various sorts, including a baritone.
The Ferringtons I play are really Strat variations - same basic body weight, 3 pickups - but are more experimental - the blue one has Broadcaster, Alnico Strat and Gibson P90 pickups, and straight-wired volume controls, allowing infinite tone combinations between pickups. But they still sound 'Fenderish'. I still use a '64 Strat and a Kelly 'Tele' with 3 P/Us, and a '56 Tele. My old '59 Strat is very worn and unplayable just now.
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It's an honour to have this job and, to me, the greatest thing is to be up on stage and to feel that connection with an audience. It actually doesn't matter how big that audience is, as long as you get the feeling that there's that musical communication there... that mystical thing that happens in a room full of people. Music is played, things change subtly. It's a beautiful thing.
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It's just a need.
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My intention, really, is to write fiction. I sit down to write, mostly, to amuse myself, to enjoy the writing process. |
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I try to look for the good in everybody, regardless of the way they're labeled.
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People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences. |
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smile, smile, smile.
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I'll try to imagine something and see what happens. But it usually winds up being about something fairly concrete and close to home. |
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I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.
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As the writer, you’re always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you’re writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you’ve also nailed yourself. |
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But music can save your life sometimes. It probably saved me from working in a bank or something. That's a kind of salvation right there.
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Popular is a tricky word. People in large numbers don't always have the best taste. I prefer to concentrate on songs that are deserving, but slightly too arcane to be in every household -- the also-rans, the misfits, the hidden jewels. |
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I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.
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Imagining playing the guitar is a slightly looser thing than playing it. You can hear more things sometimes. The fingers of your imagination aren't quite as hidebound as your real fingers. |
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All audiences should be slightly off balance.
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Art was my favourite subject at school, and to me the Who were like an art project...
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What I wanted to hear didn't exist, so it was necessary for me to go out and create it.
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Well, first of all it's entertainment. That stops us becoming too pretentious or thinking we're great artists.
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How much more can I wring out of myself?
I don't know.
But I think I've got the craft a bit better now.
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You're often playing a character that isn't really you, but it is you. I use cinematic techniques and the first person; it gets you into the song quicker and gets you out quicker. What you leave out is suggestive. You describe a small part of the whole and suggest there's more. |
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Music is a great healer, a great diffuser of things like racism. It cuts through boundaries, and it's a very positive force in the world.
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I like to sit and watch TV while noodling on the guitar, because sometimes your fingers just discover things by themselves. |
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It's amazing what some
people read into songs.
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I take notes all the time, too. You know, something terrible happens to you, and you think, "Bastards. I'm going to write a song about that." And then you do. |
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Pretty soon I’ll be ready for
light opera or something.
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There’s a part of me that wishes I’d never said one single solitary word on any subject publicly. Then I could have been the tortured poet, and there’s so much mileage in that. But it’s too late to stop now.
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I’m not necessarily telling the truth.
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I suppose the mindset for a band show is more that you overpower the audience. That sounds rather totalitarian, doesn’t it?
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I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs.
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Amplifying acoustic instruments more than a little is really cheating, and everything becomes a compromise. |
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To stand up on a stage alone
with an acoustic guitar requires
bravery bordering on heroism.
Bordering on insanity.
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Before the gramophone you heard about the murder down the road because it was sung as a ballad. |
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I feel very privileged.
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Playboy were compiling their millennium issue and I got a call with lots of other musicians to send in what I thought were the 10 greatest songs of the millennium. And I took this very seriously. I took this literally as 1000 years and I started in 1000 AD and worked my way through. I don't think they were amused and they certainly didn't print my selections. |
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"I'm using the past as a kind of reference, but I am writing about things that mean something to me now." |
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I have to remind myself
not to set boundaries.
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I have crappy high street amps and unflattering small studio monitors, and everything sounds better in the car. |
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I like the idea of playing
in unison with yourself.
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A lot of what I do is play guitar in the structure of a song. As I write a song, I'm trying to find a way to play it. Sometimes that means I really have to push myself to find a new technique to play a song, to look for new tuning perhaps, a new fingering that I can't really do. That's always a good way of pushing myself. |
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The best thing
you've got going for you is
individuality.
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The thing I do, really, is a communication with audiences more than any achievement through records. |
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I’m always making a conscious effort to be viable and accessible.
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There was kind of an imagination there, and also a kind of sense of humor.
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I have to admit, I am really only qualified to perform about 10% of the material in the show. But I can't think of anyone who is qualified to do the whole thing, and there is some comfort in that. I mean, have you heard Pavarotti sing Love Is Like a Butterfly or Those Were the Days? Or Michael Bolton sing Nessun Dorma?
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I'm not 22 anymore
but that can be a good thing.
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It's hard to tell where one tour ends and the next begins. I'm generally touring most of any year. I'm just generally out there doing it.
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You want the audience to be uncomfortable.
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When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun -- it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.
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It still seems slightly unreal that you can get paid for doing this!
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I suppose I've written you know maybe 300 songs, you know that's not that many. I think Willie Dixon wrote about 2,000. Schubert wrote a lot of songs but he just did the music didn't he. |
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