“I hate labels; the problem is that if you say you’re one thing, it’s hard for people to imagine you as something else. Music is way more complicated than that.”

Lovesick, bitter and hardened heart. Aching, waiting for life to start

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little bit beyond my reach and I’m trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they’re hearing something other than what I’m hearing.

It’s incredible how one song or even one little phrase or just a few notes, if you really concentrate on it, can be a kaleidoscope of possibility.

I used to edit myself. If something seemed super-simple I had to make it more complicated.

Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I’ve been with all along, that’s where I really learn.

There’s so much music out there & so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

To me, jazz is a place where anything is possible.

I’ve been lucky with the circle of people I’m playing with. We’ve played enough that there’s a language we talk with each other when we play.

“Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible.

For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being – old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.

I do know the older I get, the more I’m referencing music I heard as a kid.

I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players.

Now I’m trying to let what’s in there come out and acknowledge where I come from. I’m trying to make it more. ..true.

A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you.

I don’t like to label myself. I know I’m very hard to pigeonhole.

Our label is very digital-friendly. We try to provide some free stuff to get interest in the band, but we have to pay our artists. They have to get paid.

It labels us, affords us kudos, and raises our profile in the “pecking order” of our fellow troglodytes. It says to others, “See, I’ve done so well that I can afford to do nothing at all whenever I so choose!

I’m selling more records on my own than I did on major labels.

At a major label you can start to feel that you’re working for them, and that any work you do, you’re never going to see any benefit.

I feel the same way about all my friends. To me, the exact relationship between me and someone else doesn’t matter much. But people want to label everything… So I guess I seem indifferent in that way.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?