Tory Gates - Page 2

“(He was) like listening to a bird sing.”

'...one thing this reviewer likes: it makes you stop and listen.'

'Being the best is not a possible thing; it's working hard.'

'I began to slowly realize what serious pop music was about. '

We would always say whether there's five people or five thousand people in the audience...we're gonna give the show of a lifetime.'

'(Break it Down) sounds like the music that I love; I wanted this record to be what I would listen to. I want to make records that sounds like my favorite band; I want to be my favorite band.'

'I think the composing thing really started to become the thing where I caught that bug, and I look at myself here twenty years later into it, and I am still kind of I'm amazed sometimes that I can sit down and still be as excited about what I do now as I was twenty years ago when I was just getting into it.”

'I have a choice to be happy or to suffer; we have this choice, and we oftentimes think it's the internal circumstances that bring us to happiness or to suffering. If we think about it, it's really a choice of our own mind.”

In Pennsylvania, 1 in 8 people, and 1 in six children struggle with hunger, according to feedingamerica.org...

'It's always been something we've struggled with is how to define the music we make. It's not necessary to define it that way. Somebody can listen to it and enjoy it, and that's enough.'

'I try to take people to a place that they really can't get to by themselves.'

'I think the more (women) just keep picking up instruments, and keep writing, and making our presence known, and not backing down, I think more and more people will be inspired to pick up instruments and continue on with that.'

'I think the most important element I like to keep in the music is the blues feeling, regardless of different chord or what we do with the notes, it's just the blues feeling has to be there.

The 13th Annual Lehigh River Blues Jam celebrates the music, and will raise funds for Mike Mettalia, a sufferer of ALS.

'My aim is to get them to start getting used to the different sounds that I'm bringing to Japan and rest of Asia. The way I see it, somebody's gotta start doing it, and why not me?

'The original idea for the show has this common thread in the universe that everybody is connected--how do you experience that with music?'

'To understand where you're going, you gotta know where you've been.' -- Slam Allen

'...there was something about the saxophone that really connected with me. It became my sort of best friend and trusted ally, still to this day, it's right there for me all the time.'

'I don't see any other genre that does not progress. Jazz progresses, hip-hop progresses, rock progresses, why shouldn't blues as well...?'

'You know who you sound like?' I say, 'No, but you're gonna tell me.' She says, 'Yeah, you're like Janis Joplin and Tina Turner all rolled in to one!”