I am evidence that you don't have to sell a lot of records or succeed in the usual way to have a big audience and a job.
Leo Kottke

I do have a library of events I can talk about and I always expect to find a different point of view on it so even if I talk about the same event in the same town it's fresh.
Leo Kottke

I don't spend a lot of time thinking of what they'll do musically, I try to imagine being locked into a windowless room with this person for twelve hours at a time. If you can look at that and think it might be fun then maybe you've got the right musician.
Leo Kottke

I had been playing single note instruments and I wanted to hear a guitar played as a piano.
Leo Kottke

I have always thought of myself as a performer first and way down the line as a recording artist.
Leo Kottke

I seem to find different material every four to six months and I frequently forget it which is a shame because it would be nice to have a bigger library.
Leo Kottke

I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.
Leo Kottke

I think that open tunings are a trap really because it's really hard not to sound like an open tuning when your using one and that gets old as well as what you learn in one open tuning is going to stay there.
Leo Kottke

I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn't want to do covers.
Leo Kottke

I was taking a nose dive somewhere between eleven and twelve because my sister had died and I was practicing something that siblings do which is follow in their footsteps and die as well.
Leo Kottke


I was two and a half and my folks would put it on the record player and I would run around the house screaming, but I haven't been that hip since.
Leo Kottke

I will literally open my mouth not knowing what is coming out.
Leo Kottke

I would say that if you don't feel like talking to the crowd something is wrong and if you force yourself to talk to them things will happen and to that extent things aren't choreographed.
Leo Kottke

I'm not subject to their rise and fall because I'm not accepted by them, so I have my own little curve going on. A lot of it is because of how much I play, I think I connect like when all you had was Vaudeville, I think I have an audience by performing a lot!
Leo Kottke

It depends on the time of the year and who I've been talking to, I try to put people in the studio I like.
Leo Kottke

It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes.
Leo Kottke

It was a kind of paralysis you would get from tendonitis and I would last about five to ten minutes into the set and it would set in and I really couldn't play.
Leo Kottke

It was almost two years after I left Capital that I put out the first one on Chrysalis and that was really instructive because it was no better in particular than any other record I'd done.
Leo Kottke

It's true that the more you put in the more you get out and that has to be there I think, If you aren't really hooked on your instrument this job would be a hell on earth but if you are, it's the best.
Leo Kottke

That was when I found out that you could talk to them and it was a whole other way to blow your stack, and it's so much fun to perform that you want to do it again and the more you get out of it the better.
Leo Kottke