I pay attention when the Academy Awards come around. I haven't watched them in a while but I used to watch them religiously when I was a kid.
In my heart I'm always in my rail-hosen.
In a place like the Greek Theater in L.A. to try and create a close connection with the audience seems almost antithetical to the architecture of the building.
At its best a live show is completely transcendent. The image I get is breaking through glass or shooting out into the free zone.
What gets me pretty pissed off is the whole Monsanto engineered foods issue.
To be lost is as legitimate a part of your process as being found.
Berlin would be a great place to have no cell phone I think. Especially if you were able to live in a central location.
When you're in pain you're genuinely very very alive and that's beautiful. Especially emotional pain.
For me it's very childish to tour on a train. And I think that's a powerful quality to inspire childishness.
Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.
I took a lot of long summer road trips with my dad and the mix of music we listened to on the road skipped around from classical to Western to new age to hyper-cinematic.
Sometimes I'm really communicating with the audience and I'm hyper-engaged. Other times my eyes are closed and I just let it be what it is.
Even the most deft pen is a clumsy tool.
It's so rare that I'll read or even watch an interview. I don't want to either. I don't want to see other people's comments.
I think Edward Sharpe's music is counter-cultural music in the strangest sense where you have a time now where love optimism hope and community are uncool and not part of the mainstream culture.
From about 5 years old on I was very contemplative and started to become constantly filled with nostalgia for the present moment and the feeling that it's always fleeting.
When you're comfortable you're not necessarily inclined to care about things that are contributing to your comfort. It's difficult.
It's not that I want to necessarily avoid my darker moments but I don't capitalize them and put a crown on them and tote them around as the answer anymore.
There are many examples of great songs that become more famous when they are covered.
Unless you are in the willingness and ease and ecstasy of some kind of moment you may end up the editor of your thoughts and of your expressions. I find I'm that way on stage.
I think fun is one of the best gifts we can give to each other. If everyone was having fun we'd be in good shape.
I'm pretty freelance. A freelance meditator. I float from one thing to the other.
I get very heated about anything that is socially unkind.
Heath Ledger was supposed to put our album on what would have been a new record label. I still feel a little dead after losing him.
I think that when you're open you're at your most powerful.
Sometimes I have to really monitor myself but the only monitoring job I really do on myself on stage is Is this truthful? Is this truthful? Is this truthful? Ideally I send it in a flow of truth.
What makes me deeply vulnerable? Probably the thing I suffer most from and have the most uncontrollable reactions from is still social anxiety.
Recording music is not really the healthiest thing for the body.
I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play or feel obliged to play that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger.