Creativity Quote by Leo Kottke

Kottke is puncturing the romantic myth of the guitarist as solitary wizard, locked in technical transcendence while the audience politely pretends to breathe. As an instrumental musician, he’s admitting a hard truth: even gorgeous playing can become relentless when it arrives with no air holes. “Relief” isn’t an apology for craft; it’s an arrangement principle, a pacing strategy, almost a form of mercy. Instrumentals demand a different kind of listening stamina, and Kottke knows that virtuosity without contrast can feel like being shouted at in flawless sentences.

The line also reveals a quietly democratic ethic. He’s not framing the show as a test the crowd must pass, but as a shared physiological experience: attention rises and falls, bodies shift, jokes land, silence matters. By insisting that performance is “really about entertainment,” he’s reclaiming a word musicians sometimes treat like a compromise. Entertainment here doesn’t mean dumbing down; it means staying in relationship with the room. The audience isn’t an exam proctor for your technique, it’s your collaborator in time.

There’s context in Kottke’s whole persona: the deadpan humor, the stories, the self-deflating charm that keeps fingerstyle fireworks from turning into a clinic. He’s arguing for showmanship as musicianship - not pyrotechnics, but dramaturgy. Great guitar playing is a tool; the point is the night itself, the arc, the breath, the feeling that you were considered.