Soul Mining: A Musical Life

Innovation is costly—it eats away at your life, your time. It makes a mockery of you as you stand there with your pants down, as you make noises in the studio. It laughs at every failure and has no patience for dreams. I still suffer the blows of insecurity, as I get it all wrong twenty times, but on the twenty-first time I may get it right, and th

Somebody always knows something I don’t know. If I had said no in the recording studio to ideas I did not fully understand, I wouldn’t have made records with nearly as much soul. Letting something you don’t understand come to fruition is an intelligence in itself.

To excel at something is to have seen an open door to an idea.

Perhaps Neil Young’s theory could apply here—if it sounds dangerous, you’re on the right track.

When I hear a bass line that I love, I run and hide and remember.

There is a difference between admiring something from a distance and being in it.

Arthur Alexander and Hendrix. In case anyone is interested, Arthur Alexander is a hero of mine. Check out his high-hat sound on his song “Anna,” long before the Beatles came along.

You can frame your work with whatever you want, but the center must have soul.

leaving ourselves open to every possibility has always been ingrained in my work technique, and so the philosophy continues.