Latest Zach Condon Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• It's a weird thing to be nineteen and be in the public eye. It was a crazy thing, it was a big deal to me, and it changed me in a lot of ways. And now that it's five, six years later, I wanted to look back at that, the start of it all, the excitement and the naïveté about it, and it just fascinated me to reflect on all that.

  Zach Condon

  Crazy, Eye, Excitement

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I mean the reason that I started writing close to home, "Santa Fe," et cetera, was a kind of looking back on past events. I don't know, it's just some of the dark spaces I've been. And it feels like with a music career and whatnot, I've been able to crawl out of those places. So it's interesting to look back on them and try to hold on to the feeling of what you went through.

  Zach Condon

  Mean, Home, Writing

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It's a little cheeky; growing up in Santa Fe was kind of a weird experience, because it's such a touristy town. So sometimes it feels a little like you're in a town that's just on display. You walk around downtown and all the shops are galleries or high end boutiques, so it can feel like you don't belong there even though you are from there.

  Zach Condon

  Growing Up, Kind, Sometimes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• What was pretty crazy was to plan a wedding around a tour. It felt very getting-hitched-in-Vegas style. It was like, we played a show in Salt Lake City, ran to New Mexico, we got married, and then I was off to Lisbon.

  Zach Condon

  Crazy, Style, Married

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I can't work in Brooklyn. Unless I'm completely locked away in a studio, there's just too much distraction and stimulation.

  Zach Condon

  Distraction

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It feels much more natural to move forward and grow with the instruments I've grown accustomed to. Piano, accordion, brass, ukulele.

  Zach Condon

  Moving, Moving Forward, Natural

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I was always looking outside of myself for stories and ideas and influences and then I kind of realized in 2010, that all of this time, I've developed a "sound." And I've never fully explored it.

  Zach Condon

  Kind, Influence

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There was always a unique Beirut sound, it was always there, and so this time I just dove straight into that, instead of daydreaming and wandering.

  Zach Condon

  Unique, Daydreaming, Dove

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It's just not an image I had ever put out about myself - the bedroom synth guy. The whole thing seemed ridiculous.

  Zach Condon

  Guy, Ridiculous, Bedroom

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• You can never not feel like that, as a working artist these days. It's funny - time off makes me nervous, but so does time on. At least the pressure wasn't coming from outside.

  Zach Condon

  Artist, Nervous

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I released that side of things really as kind of an introduction to where I came from musically, back in the day when all I had was a keyboard, a drum machine, and a four-track. So I was doing these little synth-pop ditties, and it's how I learned to write.

  Zach Condon

  Writing, Kind, Introduction

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I felt like I needed to get a few side projects out of my system before I settled in to do the new record. Usually what's asked of you, everything's a year cycle. When you get caught up in that cycle, it can be kind of brutal, actually. It was good I got to take a year off, with no pressure coming from anywhere.

  Zach Condon

  Be Kind, Kind, Brutal

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I didn't realize how different our band's senses of melody actually were. I would write a part that just made perfect sense to me, but for them, it was mind-boggling. Likewise, they could play stuff with relative ease that I never could have. If there was something lost in translation melodically, it wouldn't work at all - we'd just be 17 people in a giant room staring awkwardly at each other. When that happened, I'd go home, figure out what was wrong, fix it, and then return to smooth sailing.

  Zach Condon

  Writing, Home, Perfect

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I tried to go to community college for a while, and it's a funny story. I walked into the English class on the first day, and they told us to write about what we did over the summer. I can't remember exactly, but I think I walked out exactly at that point and went to the office to ask for my money back.

  Zach Condon

  Summer, Writing, College

  Source: pitchfork.com

• My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player. One of my earliest memories is him kind of forcing a guitar on all my brothers and me. You know, "You have to practice three hours a day!" I hated guitar at the time. I kind of picked up trumpet to spite him.

  Zach Condon

  Brother, Memories, Dad

  Source: pitchfork.com

• The greatest thing about my house was that I was in the far end of it and I could make as much noise as I wanted. By the time I moved out, I had a full-sized piano, two full-sized organs, bits and pieces of a drum kit, and a whole computer set up for Pro Tools. I had this mattress in between the piano and the organ. That was the only walking room.

  Zach Condon

  Two, Piano, House

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I can't be a student. I always hated that lifestyle.

  Zach Condon

  Students, Lifestyle, Hated

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated.

  Zach Condon

  Home, Cities, Towns

  Source: pitchfork.com

• It's a natural tendency of mine to not even listen to lyrics.

  Zach Condon

  Natural, Tendencies, Mines

  "Beirut". Interview with Jessica Suarez, pitchfork.com. August 21, 2006.

• I spent my entire life working with the smallest budget I could get. Just working with old, junky, donated equipment. The only things I bought myself were the trumpet and the $9 ukulele.

  Zach Condon

  Ukulele, Trumpets, Equipment

  "Beirut". Interview with Jessica Suarez, pitchfork.com. August 21, 2006.

• Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.

  Zach Condon

  Thinking, Giving, Way

  "Beirut". Interview with Jessica Suarez, pitchfork.com. August 21, 2006.

• I'm writing songs about New York. A lot of them carry the names of neighborhoods in Long Island. Maspeth, Montauk. I'm getting into the idea of a F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque Long Island back when New York was...New York.

  Zach Condon

  Song, New York, Writing

  Source: pitchfork.com

• I'm not an amazing trumpet player. It's mostly smoke and mirrors. You shake the trumpet and it starts to vibrate in a ridiculous drunken way, or you flop notes at the right time and you don't have to play stuff that would take seven years to learn.

  Zach Condon

  Player, Mirrors, Years

  "Beirut". Interview with Jessica Suarez, pitchfork.com. August 21, 2006.

• When I came back to America, I realized that world music is no joke, it really has a lot to it.

  Zach Condon

  America, World, Music Is

  "Beirut". Interview with Jessica Suarez, pitchfork.com. August 21, 2006.

• I fell off a bridge when I was 14, then had surgery when I was 17. Now my left wrist is an inch-and-a-half shorter than my [right one] and doesn't quite have the mobility to wrap around a guitar neck without a bit of pain.

  Zach Condon

  Pain, Guitar, Bridges

  "Beirut". Interview with Jessica Suarez, pitchfork.com. August 21, 2006.