Brian McKnight

In my family on my mother’s side we’re all church musicians first so I don’t remember a time when we weren’t doing something musical. My brothers and I sang in a little quartet, my aunts and uncles sang and my grandfather was a minister of music in our church, so walking and talking was like doing music for us.

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists… I’ve worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.

I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. You can’t sit back and try to figure out what people want or leave it up to them to decide. When we all started in this business we would dictate to the audience what was great and they picked up on that based on the fact that we believed that it was great. But that’s all changed. What’s happened in the last ten years or so because is that the technology now means that everyone with a computer can make music and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

My fans are the best in the world! They’ve grown up with me and stayed with me through this entire journey.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

Music and song are, in my opinion, so fine and necessary a part of life that without them we cannot be said really to live at all.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

Musically, I love to talk just off the top of my head and that’s what Jazz is all about.

Once you become predictable, no one’s interested anymore.

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

It’s important to find your own voice and do something of your own.

I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand – and I have big fat hands – I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato. I could sustain a note. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions. By fooling with the feedback between my amplifier and instrument, I started experimenting with sounds that expressed my feelings, whether happy or sad, bouncy or bluesy. I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing.

It’s important to reflect on what made Jazz so special.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

If you want to make money in music, get into the band uniform business.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

I never heard of a Jazz musician who retired. You love what you do, so what are you going to do… play for the walls?