Robert Cray Quotes

"We were coming back into the States from Canada when that all went down. I didn't come up with the idea. The idea came from the promoters. I said, "Yeah, let's do it." Seattle was the right place for that. That was the original home base for me, so we had a great turnout."

"A lot of bands would be aching to be in the position we are."

"Normally when we go in and write the songs we write, we think about doing a cover, but never a covers record. That would be, for us, a concept. We don't want to have a concept!"

"I liked the Beatles because there was so much melody. Jimi Hendrix is still one of my heroes."

"I pulled the Johnny character from the Jamaican Johnny Too Bad thing,"

"We're obviously doing some of the newer things, but we go all the way back to the Bad Influence' album that was released in 1983, ... We like to mix it up."

"Curtis wore prescription Ray-Ban sunglasses, and he had a little growth of hair under his bottom lip. Right then, Belushi got the idea to start the Blues Brothers, basing his character on Curtis."

"Yes, I sing songs about relationships on the edge, relationships of all kinds, but remember I did not write them all, ... They are not all based on my experiences. Years ago, I wrote with Dennis Walker and Bruce Bromberg, who were 10 years older and divorced two or three times. They had great senses of humor, which is where lines like 'a boatload of lawyers just sank' came from. It is their stories on Strong Persuader, my breakthrough album from 1986. Sneaking out the window, 'Porch Light,' they are not my songs or lines. So, my life is not as miserable as some of the music makes it out to be. My wife Sue and I have been married for 15 years. She's an actor, but Sue gets the credit she deserves on some of my songs."

"My idea when I sat down to write it was to put myself in the position of a young man wanting to do the right thing,"

"The idea behind that was trying to get that spontaneity that comes with learning the song for the first time, ... Over-rehearsing kind of takes the fun out of recording — it makes it 'perfect,' but lifeless."