Ken Peplowski

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.

The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: You feel this, you play this.

I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

I’m not like a legend that – so I’m sort of in the middle in this sort of gray area where, you know, I’m creating music, and I’m not saying there isn’t an audience, because there is; because all of those people go out and spend $80 to $150 on a concert ticket.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there’s no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijuana, and will expire on cocaine.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.