When you hear me sit at the piano by myself and do one of those super-personal, confessional songs, that's where my true voice is.
— Beth Hart
The thing is, I'm not really a great pianist at all. But if God said I could either sing or play piano, and which would it be? I would definitely choose the piano.
Once I finish something, if I don't feel that it's absolutely fabulous, there's no way I would ever let it be recorded, I wouldn't even present it to a producer.
Etta James takes credit for writing some of the lyrics on 'I'd Rather Go Blind,' which I think are some of the most phenomenal lyrics I've ever heard. There's arguments now about who wrote it, but she always takes credit for it in her live performances.
One of the beautiful things about music is it gives you an opportunity to learn how to tell the truth, and it's a life-long learning process.
When you love the music that you're going to play, of course you're going to do your best.
If I ever had to choose between having a good mind and good health with having big success, then there's no contest: I'd put my health first every time.
I'm such an emotional performer, and my head is always like a rollercoaster, so if I'm in a good place and feeling grateful, that's when I notice that my shows come across as a lot more positive.
My job is to work at song writing and singing and telling the truth in song writing. My job is to be courageous enough to go on stage and tell the truth, the same truth that's gone into my song writing.
I know what makes me connect to my music - it is knowing that I am not alone in my feelings and my thoughts.
I guess it's about getting older. I know that I'm going to lose people that I love - I'm going to die myself - so everything seems to be getting somehow sweet and more important and more special and more humbling and more challenging and more terrifying all at the same time.
I always think that you should never, ever force a producer to do something with a song that they don't think they can do something fantastic with, I think it's a stupid idea to force it, even if you think it's your best song.
My story is how to have a life while dealing with mental illness, and I've had a life. I've been blessed. It's been a different kind of life than what I planned on, but it's been a good life nonetheless.
On piano, I tend to write either gospel or singer-songwriter songs, sometimes kind of rocking blues songs. But the more heavier rock stuff I will write on bass.
I tend to have a lot of songs ready for each record I do anyway. I always have. I was thinking, the more you write, the better chance you're going to come up with a collection of stuff that is going to work together.
I love getting to have different food and getting to be around different people and different cultures and different ways people look at life. It's really kind of helped me open up my mind and see the world from different perspectives.
Sometimes when people ask a lot of me, or they're not liking what I'm turning in, especially when I'm working one on one with someone, I can get really insecure.
I worked with Mrs. Davis for four years, and then she realized, as the material started getting harder, that I had never learned to read. I was just listening as she'd play the song, and I'd play it back. When that happened, she got very upset and stopped being my teacher.
I really love Dinah Washington and anything live from her - she had some of the greatest jazz musicians in the whole world, and sometimes she would be with a big band, and sometimes she'd just be on stage with a muted trumpet, upright bass, and a piano.
At first, I was using my sister Susan's lyrics, as I could not write myself, only the music. And then one day, she and I had a fight, and she threatened to take away the lyrics from all the songs that I put the lyrics to, so it was that day that I began writing my first lyric to the music.
I don't ever go and write music for an album. That's not something I do. I don't go and write music for an audience or a career; I don't do that at all. I write basically all the time. I'm addicted to it.
I'm a Bipolar 1, Rapid Cycler. So really easily, if I'm around people that are sick and are not medicated, and there's a lot of people going to AA that should be medicated that are really, truly mentally ill, then I end up being triggered.
We all have our ups and our downs, and it's consistent throughout all of our lives. It's not a movie: you don't get to a point where, suddenly, you're free forever - it's life.
For any performer who's coming up, if they really want to test their psychology and how they handle themselves on stage, then coming to the U.K. as a whole is a wonderful place for that.
That's the great thing about social media: you can make one move, and everybody knows about it, and I kind of like that.
There is something about live albums that I enjoy so much more than studio albums from all of my favorite artists. When I am listening to them live, I get to connect so much more to their truth than in studio albums.
If you work hard at something, you're going to find a way that you can live in this life, no matter what your handicaps are.
Each night, we try something new, play different songs, see what works, what goes down well, mix it up a bit until we find the right mix.
I always feel like you never know: sometimes you can put out work that you feel is really strong, and other times, you can put out work you think is less strong, and people react to it, so it's kinda like in the eye of the beholder!
I'm not a doctor, but I would assume that anything that you're doing that's harming you, and you can't stop doing it, is a sign of mental illness.
To me, I don't care if I co-write or if I write alone. If it's a great song and it makes it to the record, then that's what is supposed to come, you know what I mean.
I always kind of say to people, don't believe the hype. You are never as good as what they say; you are never as bad, and remember that you do it just to make you happy and to enjoy it.
I always try and be as positive as I can and give people the benefit of the doubt because, in my own experience - seeing myself fall so hard so many times in my life and do so many things where I lost my way so many times - and then people didn't give up on me, like my husband and my family.
I love 'Fire On The Floor.' It's just smouldering. I think it's gonna be a fantastic piece to perform live. It's filled with passion. It's about when someone you know is so bad for you, but you can't help it.
The piano represents home to me. It represents a place where I can heal - the sound of it, the feel of it, the way it looks.
I have no idea what was the first record I ever bought, but I think I asked my mom to buy me... um... a collection of Beethoven when I was a little girl because I became very addicted to his music. It might have been piano sonatas.
I wrote my first song when I was four, and I played it at my piano recital.
The only thing as a kid that really mattered to me was that I wouldn't quit. When I say 'quit,' I mean you wake up, you go to the piano, you go to whatever instrument, and you work at learning how to tell the truth.
Leonard Cohen is probably the greatest lyricist for music that's ever lived, you know?
I don't think that Americans are ungrateful, not at all. But I do think that we are a young country, and we have a lot to learn.
If I'm in a good place, then I'm really open-minded to what's being presented, but if I'm in a bad place, I'm much more closed-minded.
I think that, being on the road, you've got your family with you, so there's no way that you can have a closer feeling to a group of people that you love than when you sit down and have a dinner or a lunch or a breakfast together.
If I love Etta James, it's not just the voice, and it's not just the song, but it's the energy that connects me to her, so if she is strong, I can be strong, too, and if she is sad, I know I am not alone, or if she is joyous, I can connect with that joy.
I've been in therapy since I was five, but music goes way, way, way, way, way beyond therapy.
I think that anytime that you can open your eyes and see all that you have and all that you've been blessed with, it's the greatest way to connect you with God, just being grateful rather than always wanting more, wanting to be different, wanting to be better.
I should be writing songs about happiness all day long, but a lot of my songs get inspired from that place of unworthiness and shame, which really goes with mental illness.
,what saved my life was my husband. He nursed me back to health, and he continues to do that to this day. It's not easy to be married and to have a relationship with someone with mental illness.
I'm writing all the time when I'm at home. When I'm on the road, I just get ideas, and I put it on my iPhone.
It's really hard to do, but I think it's an important thing for, no matter what type of artist you are, to trust that the reason why you are given the love of being artistic is just to make you happy - it's not to make you rich and famous.
If I'm happy and joyous, which I have been a lot in my life, thankfully, I'm usually not at the piano writing about it.
