Images
I don't have time for language poetry anymore. I don't want to throw people off anymore.
David Berman
Like they used to say about Joe Montana, he threw soft because he couldn't throw hard. He was successful because he didn't try to do what he couldn't. I couldn't rock out harder than everybody, or overpower people with mastery like Jack White of the White Stripes, so why try? That's why I've always worked harder on words.
I don't know if I actually respect other artists as people as much as I should. I look at their work as excellent data that feeds my mind as nature feeds my body.
Lyrically, country music is the most satisfying music for me.
I've never been a big movie person, but I used to watch movies regularly in my life, and sometime in the '90s I just stopped. I certainly never was an educated moviegover.
My only advice would be to someone right now, is if you're in a position in your life where you need to make a change, this is the best time.
I still believe in putting something out and not asking people to buy the record, then buy a ticket to my show and then buy a t-shirt and then a, like, copy of the show they just saw on CD. That's undignified to me.
I was much further along as a poet than as a songwriter, but the songs were getting more attention. They were doing what art is supposed to do, mixing it up with people.
I can't imagine putting my name on a t-shirt. For someone to wear my name? Me? It's ridiculous.
My father is a despicable man.
Sometimes I turn the TV just below where you can hear it and write down what I think they might be saying by the mumbles and rhythms.
In the beginning, because of the Pavement thing, we were able to sell a certain amount of records. We were able to sell not such a great amount of records, but enough to live on. So there was no incentive to do what didn't come naturally.
In my whole life, I've had maybe 10 people who have told me how much my music means to them.
All musicians should write poetry or at least read it if they want to improve their game. Except for people who believe lyrics don't matter.
I try every day and every night to find a movie or a TV show that I can watch, but I just can't make it past ten minutes of anything.
If they told me I couldn't leave the radius of six miles from my house, I really wouldn't care. There's nowhere I really want to go.
In an email... like I did 100 interviews, and I never repeated one story. That's impossible to do when you do face-to-face interviews, because your brain locks and you say the same thing over and over again.
Definitely in everything I do, the comic is a part of it.
My faith was undermined by the same sort of things that make people skeptics of religion in general. Part of it was, there was no real place for me in Judaism. Maybe if there was I would've hung in there, but I was attracted to the social-justice aspects of Judaism, and I was attracted to the prophets.
In 2004, I don't think any Silver Jews fan was probably expecting another record.
For a long time, I've struggled very, very much with what people call treatment-resistant depression.
I hear luxury brand names, I cringe.
When I was seven my parents divorced. My father went to Dallas. My mom fled to the shelter of my grandparents in a strange central Ohio town of 22,000, Wooster. When it looked like I was growing up to be a wimp I was forced to live with my father, which I did not want to do.
There are enough really good love songs and I don't even know if I could write one if I tried.
I'm not convinced I have fans.
Some people like my singing. But it sounds like bad singing to a lot of other people.
Silver Jews was always a coolection of old friends. Uncoolection.
I'm interested in direct communication about domestic life.
The songs of mine that don't work, the ones that I wouldn't consider playing live for instance, fail to integrate their idiosyncracies. It's not that they fail because they're boring, but because they overreach.
In the beginning, it was meant to be like a faceless art piece. Then I did the first record and it received enough notice to satisfy my needs. I questioned the procedure out of fear. The Silver Jews was never meant to be recreated live.
I guess on all Silver Jews records, it's extremely male-centric.
I want so many artists that I care about to go away and grow up, and have been amazed at how hard that is for some people to do.
I imagine that I'm less famous than the 15th ranked bowler in the world.
I've never done much to try to build an audience.
For the first 12 years of recording I would finish the album, then on the day it came out I'd never hear the songs again.
When art is about craftsmanship, then guys like me don't make it as artists.
I always had a background belief in God. In other words, instinctually I've never doubted that we are not alone.
It's a Gen X thing to be okay with going unnoticed or unrated or untouched. To be free from strangers' expectations, or anger. People got angry at me when I stopped making music because it seemed I was devaluing everything.
I always loved bands with mystique.
Fan reaction is so out-sized and hyperbolic in rock music compared to other arts.
All my songs were made at the end of the neck, 'farmer's corner' chords.
My great grandfather was the last practicing Jew in my family. He died in 1982.
I trust myself.
If I believed in fate I'd be very curious why I picked the name Silver Jews.
Bobby Braddock is great.
I was not born to be the center of attention in a crowded room.
Nashville only thrives when talented people from out of town move here from somewhere else.
I believe that intermittent live performance has cut short the writing lives of touring musicians.
My whole life I've tried to find the thing I can do that other people can't do, and invest in that, and the one thing I can do is write narratives and build characters. I can do that.
I read Henry Miller's 'Nexus', 'Sexus' and 'Plexus' the summer after I graduated from college. It cemented my decision to spurn any and all careers.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10