Ferron on setting songwriting goals, 2005

You know, if I get up today and want to write a hit song today, I’m probably going to be pretty depressed by the time I go to bed. If I get up today and think, I’m going to put two words together in a way that I’ve never seen side by side before and it’ll mean something, chances are I might get something. If that’s why you’re doing it, the possibility for reward is high.

Outtake from a Ferron profile in the February 2006 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.

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David Grisman on improvisation, 1993

I always think that really the only difference between improvisation and composition is a time factor.... There's a certain amount of what you "improvise" that's part of your shtick--it's the reason you can recognize Charlie Parker, because he is playing the same stuff every time, in a way....

But it's the creative process, and what I'm trying to say is that even though we can say it's improvisation, what we played today isn't totally different from what we played yesterday. I don't think anybody just improvises something that they've never heard before, unless they're somebody like [pianist] Cecil Taylor--I wouldn't really imagine that he knows what he's playing half the time, in other words that he could write it down.

From an interview with David Grisman and Jerry Garcia in the book Rock Troubadours

Peter Mulvey on making it as an indie musician, 2003

I just do the thing you can’t replace with anything else: I play music live, for real, in rooms, with people. That’s what I do with most of my time. I think the reason that [indie music] is thriving is because the more mainstream music scene is getting further and further away from that. So you can move a lot of records by having a video with like a chase with spaceships and stuff, but ultimately, it’s just unsatisfying. It’s like you are whipping up this giant soufflé but it isn’t made of anything, and what we do is just food. That’s it.

From a story on the indie music business for NPR's All Things Considered

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