When you're little, first of all, everybody smiles at you because you're cute, so you think the world is great. And everything is so vivid. You know, you're not clouded out by anxiety, and you don't miss things.

Patty Griffin

Categorized in : You Great World Cute

I'm going to be doing solo stuff. The idea is to do 'small' and 'off my beaten path,' or go back to an old, beaten path - do some smaller things that I haven't done in 15 or 20 years. Just to sort of get my feet wet, because I haven't done my own material for a couple of years - I've been doing a lot of other things.

small my-own path feet

There's an imbalance when if a woman goes out for a walk at 3 in the morning and something happens to her it was somehow her fault, and with a man that's not true.

woman walk man morning

From the age of 12, I had an understanding that singing was something I loved to do more than anything, and I did say to myself, 'Why not?' But there were definitely some doubts along the way.

loved myself singing age

I grew up listening to AM radio in the '70s and hearing all of that great soul and rhythm and blues music, which definitely influenced the way I sing. But singing gospel has made me a much more humble person. There are so many people who were geniuses who only a few people knew about when they were alive.

me music soul people

I grew up Catholic, so I have these defenses about listening to anything with too much religiosity; some of the lyrics didn't sit well in my mouth. One of my beefs is the patriarchal setup. Having the 'he, he, he, God, God, God, king, king, king' stuff was hard for me.

king me god listening

I've noticed more people coming to shows and I've had a feeling that they were from a part of the culture I haven't been able to get to before, younger people. I think on iTunes they've been experimenting with my songs and the digital radio world has been very kind to me.

me culture people world

When I started performing, I played acoustic music, partly because that way you don't have to worry about interacting too much with other people creatively. Asserting myself in that way was not really a strong point for me.

myself me you music

I don't actually have to think very hard when I'm writing. I mean, there are times where it's a task, and you have to plug away and plug away. But then there are times when a song writes itself in 15 minutes, and you're just struggling to keep up with it.

think you writing song

One of the great things that I loved about doing solo - which I ended up doing because I was too shy to ever try out for bands back in the day - I could sit there with a list of songs and 'paint away' for the show.

loved day great shy

Music doesn't have to be fancy. I work hard and enjoy the fact that people want to come to my shows. That's simple, but I'm pretty blue-collar about it.

music simple work people