Aaron Dessner Quotes

"Just because you listen to The National, Spotify might tell you that you want to listen to The Lumineers' music. Well, maybe you don't."

"It's very exciting to have a festival in the heart of Boston. It's an amazing experience to be in a city and to be able to walk in and out of a festival. I think that's part of what's going to make Boston Calling really special."

"And my parents live down in West Virginia, and I have to drive through the Shenandoah Valley pretty often to go visit them. You actually drive right by Gettysburg and some other spots where there were huge battles."

"I'm very fortunate and grateful to wake up every morning in the rural countryside I live in, looking at farmland and these beautiful mountains."

"Our writing, especially during 'Boxer' - the recording process was the writing process, which is not the way I would advise anyone else to do it."

"For whatever reason, you gravitate to certain subjects, and I read a lot of history."

"There are some things that you see that are hard to talk about. You can't talk about it. You just bear witness to them."

"I grew up fly fishing when I was a kid. The feeling of it is fun. I went fly-fishing on Lake Delaware once, and I caught a record brook trout."

"I kind of love opening, because it's easier and kind of just more fun to get up and play fast and furious and have a good time."

"When you're working with someone new, it takes a second to understand their instincts and range. It's not really conscious."

"I do have a way of playing piano where it's very melodic and emotional, but then often it's great if whoever's singing doesn't sing exactly what's in the piano melody, but maybe it's connected in some way."

"Seven' is this kind of nostalgic, emotional folk song."

"I had been living with my family in France as COVID was starting to spiral out of control in Europe. I said to my wife that maybe they should come back to the States with me because I was worried about getting separated."

"I tried hard not to think about the scope or scale of making a record that would be heard by millions and millions of people. I did a pretty good job of tuning that out."

"Music for me is an emotional necessity. It's therapy. It's what I live and breathe."

"The National guys will tell you the same thing - I tend to work until the last possible minute."

"Sometimes you become the person people try to pin you into a corner to be, which is not really fair."

"Whenever I write anything, I do sing to it, to try and make sure it's interesting or compelling to sing to. I've gotten in the habit of sharing that with other, more charismatic vocalists."

"One of the negative sides of a really intense arc as a touring band is there are big gaps in your memory because you're so exhausted."

"White people need to wake up and tell the truth about US history and the inequality and the ways in which racism is so entrenched."

"Anyone who's speaking up about anything becomes a target."

"I used to think of 'alternative rock' as a radio format, kind of the way 'indie rock' used to have more meaning. But it means different things depending on where you are or what country you're in."

"Big Red Machine is really a community effort: I guess it involves almost 30 musicians. It does come out of our friendship, but it's really something that is deeply collaborative."

"The song 'Hymnostic' is kind of a gospel song, and that song is really fun to sing with as many people as possible. And anyone can sing it, you know?"

"I think the idea is that every time we perform Big Red Machine music it should be different somehow - like, different people, different songs maybe, definitely different versions of the songs."

"Our recordings, you feel that it's been, not labored, but you feel that it's been constructed in a way where sometimes it's hard for us to create the feeling that this was done in a room."

"I always want to have time to experiment, and have transitional things, and have these weird non-songs, but usually the stuff I'm working on comes down to this weird deadline, where it just never happens, and it's kind of a bummer."

"There are people who want to hear what they consider your hits. There are people who want you to experiment and explore random, rare things. And it's kind of a different; they're two different beasts."

"I busked a few times in Asheville, North Carolina, when I was 18. It was terrifying. I was probably just trying to meet girls."

"I am an expert at applying premade pesto to pasta."