Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.

Bonnie Raitt

Categorized in : People Song Gigs

AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' is the greatest meshing of vocal, guitar, and content I've ever heard. That's what I aspire to.

hell guitar heard

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

music real thinking

Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more.

childhood guitar school

I've watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would ha... by Bonnie Raitt

I've watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would happen with me.

afterlife get-better age

With the new ways of getting music out, you don't need a label if... by Bonnie Raitt

With the new ways of getting music out, you don't need a label if you're a legacy artist.

legacy artist needs

A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.

corny political done

The arts can be a great way to bring people together. I don't preach from the stage. I try to stay positive on solutions.

stay-positive people art

Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music.

strong real appreciation

Im happy to say that at 62, I think Ive reached that point where stuff doesnt bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that Ive had, and losing so many of the great artists that I was close to. They taught me how to see it with a grain of salt and a lot of humor and perspective.

gratitude artist loss

We did a two month tour with Taj Mahal that was really healing and cathartic and a good distraction after my brother passed away. Then I knew I wanted to take a year off, and it was really nice to have that chance to fall apart.

nice brother fall

I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I'm in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them.

musician play people

I can't make you love me if you don't, by Bonnie Raitt

I can't make you love me if you don't,

ifs heart feels

Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice - those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have more than you need, then you share it with people who don't.

struggle rights native-american

Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.

rocks guitar song

I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.

artist writing jobs

'I Will Not Be Broken' has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event... it's going to inform the richness that you sing from... The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper.

broken healing thinking

I was offered to take over for Reba in 'Annie Get Your Gun,' but it wasn't where I wanted to be. I think my fans would be upset if I confined my shows to one city for a long period of time.

gun cities thinking

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

responsibility jobs believe

I didn't have to be a pop singer with a certain look. When I started, there was really a revolution in natural artists with blues and folk artists crossing over; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to get started.

singers artist looks

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.

rocks artist mean