Amy Ray – HuffPost 2.24.12

Mike Ragogna: What advice might you have for new artists?

Amy Ray: Oh God, it’s such a big world right now for artists. There are as many possibilities as you can have time for, getting your music out there with the internet, and Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, and everything that you have, there is a way to spread the word. To me, the first thing you have to have is substance and content and real depth. I think just because there is access to so many ways to get your stuff out doesn’t mean that you should immediately be getting stuff out and spending all your time on that. That kind of stuff can take a lot of time and take away from your creative time. I suggest balancing it; if you’re a songwriter, really spend time on your song-writing and balancing that with spending the time promoting yourself or whatever you would call it. Playing live is still really important. If you’re a pop artist like Lady Gaga, into the iconic image and all that stuff, that’s a different road. It still takes a lot of work and you still have to have substance if you’re going to last. But if you want to be a songwriter-based musician, whether you play punk or rock or country or jazz, whatever, you have to work on your songwriting and you have to work on being able to play in front of people, I think. That performance is how you create the groundwork for a lasting career. If you don’t get out there and do it, people don’t stay with you. You don’t touch them the same way. I think that even though there are all these new ways to get your stuff out there, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to go out and tour and play live shows and really earn that kind of communication and connection with people.

MR: It’s all about the connection, isn’t it.

AR: Even with all the social networks in the world, it doesn’t really work if people start to figure out that you don’t have the substance. People are smart, they’re smarter than we think. (laughs) At some point, they’re not going to stay with you or hear what you’re doing if there’s not some integrity behind it. I don’t mean like you’re a good person, but I mean integrity like you really “do it.”