Benmont Tench

Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song. ”

Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith. ”

I did enjoy Nashville a lot of the time, because I made really good friends who were really good songwriters, and they would be a joy to hang out with. ”

I was just writing songs because, if a song shows up, you've gotta write it. I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't have any faith in my voice. ”

There was a period when I wrote in Nashville for Maverick and then Warner/Chappell, and it was interesting. ”

I think that with Bob Dylan around, we're living in an era where we have Whitman presenting new work, we have Dickens presenting new work, we have Yeats and Shakespeare presenting new work. It's that level. ”

Sometimes you work with somebody you've never heard of because you just feel like working. ”