Alex Ebert Quotes

The goal is to be free and hopeful in the music. Because that’s really the only intention you need. From there, every natural and powerful intention and feeling will, on its own, slide right out of you – out of your spirit.

Berlin would be a great place to have no cell phone, I think. Especially if you were able to live in a central location.

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.

For me, it’s very childish to tour on a train. And I think that’s a powerful quality, to inspire childishness.

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.

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.

Pro Tools was invented to quicken the recording process.

For the better part of my life, I was always trying to manufacture somehow what I would consider ‘living.’ Because I grew up sort of upper-middle class and I didn’t relate so much to that as a life, and I wanted to really find ‘living.’

When you’re in pain, you’re genuinely very, very alive, and that’s beautiful. Especially emotional pain.

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.

My pain is usually caused by some sort of attack on my ego. So usually, pain is an indication of something that, eventually, I’m going to want to transcend. But sometimes pain is just pain that you sit through. I find it can have a really exhilarating effect.

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 get very heated about anything that is socially unkind.

Even the most deft pen is a clumsy tool.

I think the most important thing to remember is that pain passes. And artistically, the pain is going to pass. It’s what you want to express out of the pain as opposed to indulging in the agony-and-pain mantra of songwriting that became such a hit in the ’90s and still, all the way up to now.

At its best, a live show is completely transcendent. The image I get is breaking through glass or shooting out into the free zone.

When you’re comfortable, you’re not necessarily inclined to care about things that are contributing to your comfort. It’s difficult.

It took me a long time to be alright with smiling onstage.

Physical pain is problematic because it’s very difficult to transcend that. Sometimes you’re just in physical pain, and that’s a bummer. Even then, there are beautiful things involved in the healing of that. I’ve experienced some.

I think that when you’re open, you’re at your most powerful.

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.

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.

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.

To be lost is as legitimate a part of your process as being found.

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.

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.