Words matter. These are the best Steve Forbert Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m self-deprecating, but I’m an artist, too. I have to write new songs to chronicle stuff for myself. I write a song like ‘Middle Age’ or ‘Responsibility’ or ‘I Just Work Here,’ and it’s about how bleak life can be. But it’s real.
I don’t cringe when I think of doing old material. A lot of the people have been with me through the years.
But I’m able to just keep going, and that’s the challenge. It’s the next song. And then just enjoying the shows and people who come out to the shows. It’s pretty organic, really.
I just play, and I’m always trying to write songs.
It’s often said that life is strange. But compared to what?
I have ideas in mind, things that I’m working toward. There have to be goals; there has to be a challenge. Just playing, in and of itself, is great. But there has to be some motivation to it.
I haven’t had the most lucrative career. If I’m going to be completely honest, I’m a one-hit wonder.
I relate to the audiences and they know me. It’s pretty real.
I’m never gonna be a Carlos Santana – an instrumentalist. I just like songs. It’s three minutes of something that can be very powerful.
My priority doesn’t lie with the whole website and Facebook and such; I’m still walking down the road in a pair of real shoes. You need to just play as much as you can. Get in front of people, as I’ve always said. It doesn’t matter if it’s ten people at an open mic or opening a show for someone. Play all the time.
For as long as I’m able to write songs and sing them, it’s just about making them ones I feel proud to sing again and again.
I wouldn’t be interested in just doing a show that’s mapped out and choreographed with a set list. That would’ve been boring so long ago it just wouldn’t be any fun.
I’m not trying to be the new anybody.
As you get out and try to do things, you always find that in order to make an idea a reality, it goes through some changes. It doesn’t always come out exactly like you envisioned it.
If something doesn’t work, you have to admit it. Always try to find what’s going right and what’s going wrong with your music. If you can, pool your resources and record yourself; do that frequently.
So I played the acoustic guitar and harmonica and stomped my foot and I think I was right in assuming that Greenwich Village would be the best place to perform my own material and possibly get some attention, move on to making records and all.
Music should be truthful and real, but it should also be healing and uplifting.
Folk-rock hasn’t changed much over the decades since the Byrds started it.