Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Saviours get crucified.
I could go back to the railroad. I liked that job.
I had a great job with the railroad, a good salary.
Everybody is on drugs . . . just give 'em what they want.
Both my grandfathers and my mother's brother were musicians.
Music Row gets dragged through the dirt, but they're just trying to survive.
I didn't graduate from college, so I might as well be on Atlantic Records, right?
I've always played music. But you know, in eastern Kentucky, everybody plays music.
Fewer and fewer bars are doing live music. Instead it's more DJs and dance parties.
I love tape. It's another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.
I'll never get tired of being told I sound like Waylon Jennings, but I don't hear it myself.
I knew I loved playing bluegrass, so I'd end up down there on Sunday nights at the bluegrass jam.
Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley - guys like that were huge influences.
I walked in, looked around, and the navy recruiter was a really hot brunette, so I signed up with her.
I pretty much just hang out with the kid. I want, like three more, because that's all I ever want to do.
I'd love to make short film videos pushing the conventional standards of what a country music video can be.
All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.
You can embrace nostalgia and history and tradition at the same time - it has to progress or it can't survive.
I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.
I tried to make a honky-tonk country record - rough-hewn, cut fast, and all analog - like I wasn't hearing anymore.
It's a long road, so we are just trying to stay focused and grounded and keep moving forward. I'll take it, though.
You spend all this time reading or thinking or praying or searching or exploring.Maybe there's an Omega Point of love.
Even with most finite planning you never know what the final result will reveal itself to be until it's staring back at you.
Elvis was a way bigger influence than Waylon Jennings, but you don't wanna tell people, 'I never really listened to Waylon.'
Even with most finite planning, you never know what the final result will reveal itself to be until it's staring back at you.
I someday hope to find the time and coin to invest more of my creative energy towards the visual media side of releasing music.
Atlantic has been great to me. They didn't flinch when I told them I was self-producing, and nobody was popping their head in the studio.
I knew I wanted to make a concept record in song-cycle form, like my favorite Marvin Gaye records where everything just continuously flows.
There have been many socially conscious concept albums. I wanted to make a 'social consciousness' concept album disguised as a country record.
I want all that dirt and grime and life-sauce. A lot of my favorite old soul records have it, but you don't hear it on country records anymore.
I just don't see myself as a songwriter or a country singer or any of those things anymore. It's more trying to express ideas and emotional textures.
I'm not meant to sit on the couch and not play music. But I never want to feel like I have to put out a record. I don't want to ever make those records.
I'm interested in exploring various forms of newer media that might allow those who otherwise don't listen to country to find and connect with my music.
That might be completely self-indulgent, to write your first major-label debut as a dedication to your family. But, you know, that's where my heart was.
I just really want to make - to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.
Anything that I'm naturally curious about, I get really into. Maybe it's O.C.D. I get really consumed by something until I absorb it, then I'm done with it.
I wanted to make an album that takes a journey through all my favorite periods in music and then culminates in something that will most likely end my career.
I find that I have to just kind of avoid the Internet as much as possible. And even more so, when I go and look at it, I remember why I should be avoiding it.
London's been really good to me - England as a whole - but the Scots and the Irish especially are very appreciative because that's kind of where it all came from.
Part of me still feels like I've never had the opportunity to properly express all my earliest influences, so for now, I find isolation to be my biggest influence.
I believe framing reality is one of the only ways we can ever be sure it actually exists. In that regard, I feel as though I'm still learning who I am as an artist.
I just have to do what it is going to make me happy, first and foremost - what is honest and what is sincere. Anybody that listens will hopefully connect with that.
You make a little noise, and you can sell out your local hometown club. But then you drive an hour down the road to the next town, and there might be eight people there.
I want people to focus on listening, not the image. And I want to play to everyone: rednecks, dubstep kids, punk rockers, and people who like as-real-as-it-gets country music.
Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three - so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.
I think when you're dealing with any issues about trying to become a better human being, you have to look at a lot of things about yourself that maybe you don't want to or aren't able to.
I lived in Japan when I was younger for about two years. I spent my time equally between religiously studying Aikido in Shinjuku by day and hard partying in Shibuya and Roppongi by night.
I saw Dolly Parton play at the Glastonbury Festival to about 120,000 people. It was an ocean of human beings. I was a mile away from the stage, and I swear to God, I could feel her energy.
Country music especially can get very formulaic - you know, you have to have your verses and a bridge and a chorus, and a lot of the songs are written as just plain and simple poetry on the road.
I'm very grateful, but at the same time, I'm glad all this happened when I'm 36 instead of 26 because I - I'm just such a homebody, and I just want to write songs and make the best record that I can.