J. Robbins Quotes

#1. You just realize that you have to be committed to this thing in this kind of world that we're in the more your support group dwindles and you start seeing your peers buying houses and getting corporate jobs. So that can be discouraging.

J. Robbins

#2. It's sort of a fine line where you're dying to express it and then hoping no one really gets it that closely. But I'm pretty much over that. I'd really just like to be understood.

J. Robbins

#3. The fact of picking up an instrument and writing a song and expressing yourself publicly has a powerful political dimension

J. Robbins

#4. One thing I know that's really cool - it seems to me that Blake Schwarzenbach [Jets to Brazil frontman; ex-Jawbreaker] is someone who's made music that's people continue to take really personally.

J. Robbins

#5. Another cultural thing that's really creepy. It's not like in the '60s, where there were definitely great high points of creativity where people were trying to outdo each other to be noticed even

J. Robbins

#6. For most of the projects I've worked on, I've been entrusted with some degree of musical responsibility, even if it's just like coaching for vocals and stuff.

J. Robbins

#7. The Grammys thing doesn't even touch my world at all.

J. Robbins

#8. Tim [Omundson] is just so wonderfully delicious. He has the sexiest beard on television. He's such a fabulous actor, and a great character.

J. Robbins

#9. I'm the kind of person that, as a listener, will go the extra mile to interpret something that's fairly meaningless, or that might be meaningless.

J. Robbins

#10. Because as much as I love figuring out other people's puzzles, and love putting words together in ways that feel good to sing and sound good together and suit the melody, I think most of the best songs in the world are fairly clear about what they mean to say.

J. Robbins

#11. I think politics and personal psychology and interrelationships - these things are interrelated to me and overlap.

J. Robbins

#12. Who's got the most heartbreaking voice? I don't know. Tough question.

J. Robbins

#13. Stage presence is not something I spend a whole lot of time thinking about. On the one hand, I do, because I have, like, favorite front-people and I know what's excited me to see in a band. But I can't be David Yow [Jesus Lizard frontman] and still play guitar.

J. Robbins

#14. When I run across something that feels like a real eye-opener, it's gonna have an influence on me forever.

J. Robbins

#15. I'm a terrible drummer. I can tune 'em pretty good, but I'm a pretty bad drummer.

J. Robbins

#16. There are a few artists that I'm really into. I mean, I'm a big Nick Cave fan. And there's a band from Australia called Big Heavy Stuff that's one of my favorite bands ever.

J. Robbins

#17. I'd been in a couple situations where I'd seen bands realize that they didn't have to get a good take in order to get something that sounded like a song. The musicians are there and they don't quite have it together, and then the engineer says, "Oh! That's okay, I'll just cut and paste the verse!"

J. Robbins

#18. To say someone is a producer ... it's kind of a slippery term.

J. Robbins

#19. One of my favorite things as an engineer is watching a band get comfortable in the studio and getting a great take. Like, they're playing the song, warming up, and then suddenly, the communication really happens and everybody's really in the song, and they nail it, and then that's the take.

J. Robbins

#20. I worry about financial security, and the older I get the more I worry about it.

J. Robbins

#21. I always feel like the less I think of stage presence, the better, because then I have to face the fact that I have really complicated guitar parts, I'm singing almost all the time, and I have like six pedals I've got to keep on top of

J. Robbins

#22. I'm an atrocious business man, because it's just not the way I think about things. And that's pretty much what all that Grammy/MTV kind of stuff is tied into.

J. Robbins

#23. I'm no good at predicting what will endure with people. I only know what speaks to me.

J. Robbins