Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If somebody says, 'Do you remember the first time you heard a Rolling Stones song?' if you say you do, you're crazy. You've just always heard them. You might remember the first time it impacted you, but the first time you heard one, you were in a cradle.
There ain't a woman in the world that wants to hear the word yes when she asks if you think that she looks chubby in that dress. And if she cooks all day you better eat it with a smile; it doesn't matter if it tastes just like bad gravy on a Goodyear tire.
I jetset around and play these songs and get to hang with some pretty amazing people, then I go home to a really great farm, though actually it's a disaster area of a farm at the moment. But it's certainly a blast. I wouldn't trade lives with anyone right now.
When Ray Flacke came out, it was like 'What in the heck is this?' ... there's a guy who had that Tele players attitude, and he plugged straight into that amp with a delay, and it was unbelievable the way he would bend those big strings ... he was really unique.
A hat has to be shaped to a person's face so it fights just right. It has to be done right. If you put my hat on, with my shape, you'd look like an idiot. If the bill is too high or too saggy, you look like a European tourist going to their first country concert.
When I made 'Who Needs Pictures,' my first album, I had been west of the Mississippi River one time in my life, and that was in fourth grade. We traveled to California for vacation and stayed with some friends of my parents. It was culture shock, and it was different.
I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner... And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul... Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.
We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus!.
Pilgrims travel to Jerusalem to see the Holy Land, and the foundations of their faith. People go to Washington, D.C. to see the workings of government, and the foundation of our country. And fans flock to Nashville to see the foundation of country music, the Grand Ole Opry.
Our business has changed so much. Do people even want albums, or do they just buy singles now? You sort of feel like you're the last guy manufacturing VCRs... but I really like albums, and so I like doing them. I'll be the last one making them, even when no one's buying them.
When you're with somebody as iconic as Mick Jagger or John Fogerty, I'm really aware that, in asking these guys to collaborate with me, I don't want to add a footnote to their career that's like, 'Shouldn't' have done that.' It's important to make sure that they're well represented.
There may be people in my audience who may not agree with me on some particular issue - you know, say, as a gun owner, they may not agree with me, or, you know, someone may not agree with me on a gay marriage topic. Any of those things. But those shouldn't be the reasons you listen to my music.
No one dislikes LL Cool J. If you meet LL Cool J, you fall in love with LL Cool J. LL and I had mutual friends, and he and I had always talked about doing something. My fans know LL's music. And I love him - we're blood brothers at this point. We've been through the fire together. I know no finer person.
I love being an enigma. Every time I'm tempted to respond to someone who tries to put me in a box, politically - you know, someone who gets on the Internet and says, you're pro-gun, or you're anti-gun - I stop and say to myself, 'This is great; this is what I wanted. I wanted to be the guy you can't figure out.'
It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music. They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music.
Unless you're a true prodigy, you're going to have to practice for a while being bad before you get any good. And it will seem like a waste of time. I remember that feeling well. But don't worry about wasting time, because it'll be so worth it. It's my experience that in the end, life lessons and guitar lessons begin to blur in all sorts of interesting ways.
You think back to Tele players, and James Burton was the one who started it all. He inspired Roy Nichols (guitar for Merle Haggard & the Strangers), Don Rich (guitar for Buck Owens & the Buckaroos), and guys like that to push the envelope and expand on that sound... I really identify with that kind of thinking ... those guys to me are the reason why any of us do this.
Albert Lee and I have become real close friends, and he comes out anytime I'm in the L.A. area, and he'll sit in for the whole show ! ... we've got a habit of doing that ... in Austin Redd Volkaert does the same thing ... it's fun ... I love to make it a guitar thing and the audience doesn't know any different - they think he's some new band member they don't know. They don't realize Albert's the reason we all play Teles!.
Playing live is about going for it .. it's about bringing it ... you should see a bunch of people trying out stuff, actually performing, instead of learning the record and recreating it note for note. I can't play the show the same way every night .. I really need to be in a creative environment, every night or I'll go nuts ... my manager accuses me of singing just long enough to get me to my next guitar solo - which is true.
She's a yellow pair of running shoes, a holey pair of jeans. She looks great in cheap sunglasses, she looks great in anything. She's, "I want a piece of chocolate cake; take me to a movie." She's a, "I can't find a thing to wear." Now and then she's moody. She's a Saturn with a sunroof with her brown hair blowing. She's a warm conversation I wouldn't miss for nothing. She's a fighter when she's mad and she's a lover when she's lovin'.