66 Quotes by David Longstreth

You don't write songs, really, when you're on tour.

One of the things I really like about West African guitar playing is the way it makes harmony linear. They're really spelling things out and turning chords into melodies instead of just letting them be these hanging blocks of color.

I got a little baby grand piano off Craigslist for, like, $500. It's a beautiful instrument that you hear on a bunch of the songs. That's that piano on 'Keep Your Name' and 'Work Together' and 'Little Bubble.'

I made, like, five records as Dirty Projectors before I got out of college. And then I put a band together when I got interested in going on tour around that time.

A song isn't a newspaper. It might feel direct, but it's not.

Songs, a while ago, became the medium through which I process most of the information that I receive and feel. But I go back and forth about whether this is all of life or whether you're missing something important in living and whether or not, as a humanist, you're abnegating a certain responsibility if this - this art - is just where you are.

When the Swing Lo Magellan touring wound up, it felt like the end of something for me, and I needed a break from touring. But really, the co-writing and producing I did after this gave me a different perspective on this whole thing. To me, that was like being a different spoke on the wheel.

I do have my more concept-y albums, and then I have the ones that are more about just collections of songs. For me, the first Dirty Projectors record that I put out was like that: 'The Glad Fact.'

I like the idea that songs can communicate in a way no other media can. That's why I write them.