Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird
Andrew Wegman Birdis an American musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He was initially known through his work with the band Squirrel Nut Zippers before forming Bowl of Fire, and is now best known as a solo musician. Bird's primary instrument is the violin, but he is also proficient at other instruments including whistling, guitar, and the glockenspiel. He wrote "The Whistling Caruso" for The Muppets and performed the whistling heard in both the film and the soundtrack. Bird composed the score...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth11 July 1973
CityLake Forest, IL
CountryUnited States of America
The first notes I still play when I start a sound check are classical. Those are my roots.
No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness.
Norman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different.
Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. Theyre all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. Theyre tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.
Songwriters can sort of get away with murder. You can throw out crazy theories and not have to back it up with data or graphs or research.
I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.
I've always felt that dark lyrics with dark music is pretty useless. Maybe that's a strong statement - not useless, but for me, it's just boring.
I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.
My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.
All the folks I play with come from jazz backgrounds or at least appreciate spontaneity within the parameters of a pop song.
When I start asking my friends, "What do you think this means?" And it leads to way more interesting conversations than what it actually ends up meaning in the dictionary. Like "apocryphal," for instance.
I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive.
Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.
You travel with the hope that something unexpected will happen. It has to do with enjoying being lost and figuring it out and the satisfaction. I always get a little disappointed when I know too well where I'm going, or when I've lived in a place so long that there's no chance I could possibly get lost.