Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't care what 'Pitchfork' says. They write from a place that's a little too self-aware for me to really give a damn about what they're talking about.
I'm not looking to be a superstar. I just want to be in a room with good people who are similar to me and are at least open to things that I have to say.
No matter what you thought your plans were, that's not how things are going to work out, and that's the only way you can really, I think, live successfully.
If I could write rock & roll songs on purpose, I'd do it all the time. But most of what I write comes out slow and sad because that's most of what I listen to.
My dad, as much as I love him, has one of those signs - 'The Isbell's' - on his front door, and he's got the damn apostrophe in there. I haven't strangled him yet.
I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of good songwriters, and I try to actually work on the craft of writing a song rather than just leaving it up to inspiration.
The Police could get away with doing an entire record with really no audible reverb, which I have always admired and thought would be a lot of fun to try to re-create.
What having a child - and especially a daughter - has done is lifted more of the veil for me: allowed me to see things on another level compared to how I used to see them.
Right when I started touring, there was this wariness I had of the world outside of my small town. But I'm not that person anymore, and I was never completely that person.
I've spent a lot of time in a rock n' roll band trying to fight off the fact that I was old enough to rent a car. And it's all sort of rushed in at once now. And I like it.
I've never been someone who's very prone to boredom. I don't know, boredom seems like something you should grow out of at about 15 or 16. There's so much that needs to be done.
When I was still drinking, I thought I was kind of in control of everything in my life and other people's lives and realized at some point that that just wasn't the case at all.
If I spent my time wondering about what genre I wanted to be in or where I was on the charts, I wouldn't be able to write these kinds of song. I'd be too busy doing other things.
A lot of people make records where there are a couple songs worth listening to and you skip through the rest, and I don't want to do that because those records bore me pretty bad.
A great story poorly told doesn't do anybody any good at all, and nobody wants to hear it, and nobody wants to read it. The craft of it is really more important than the subject matter.
It occurred to me the thing that broke my heart the most was when I grew up and realized everything wasn't an adventure. I got to a certain age and realized I couldn't be Indiana Jones.
I've always wanted to pull off 'No One is to Blame' by Howard Jones. I've done that a couple times in solo shows, but I can't figure out how to do that with a full band and make it work.
The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.
At some point, I'd like to make a record that's more of a self-serving guitar album, because I really love to play. It's not really something I'd expect a whole lot of people to buy, though.
I spend a lot of time wondering how to best support the people that I love, because I think sometimes that means getting out of the way. When should I leave them alone to have their own life?
It comes down to the difference between what you were planning to do and what life throws at you and you have to end up doing. The one who knows how to improvise is the one who comes out ahead.
Sometimes I leave an encounter or a conversation hoping that I didn't come off as above my raisin' - hoping that I didn't make somebody feel bad for not having as much as we're fortunate to have.
I'm not a big AA guy, but I'll go every once in a while. They do tell you that going out and helping other people really helps you a lot. It seems like a simple thing to say, but it's really true.
I feel like for me to write songs that I would be interested in as a listener, there has to be tension, and there has to be some kind of push and pull between reality and the potential of disaster.
You don't have any kind of control ultimately. Things are just going to happen as they will. And I think your best option sometimes is just to react rather than try to plan everything out in advance.
Sleeping on people's floors when you're 22 is fine. But when you get your life in order and have a family you want to keep and a certain level of health, touring bigger means you can keep going for longer.
I find the ones that have the most emotional weight, the heaviest songs. For some reason, for me, they're usually the ones I write the quickest. I put more work into uplifting material, I think, sometimes.
Something that really helps when it comes to writing songs is you start to notice how children learn and how we all had to learn in the first place, starting from the ground up. It gives you a new perspective.
My favorite thing about going to concerts has always been looking around and thinking that theres a lot of people in here that are very much like me, a lot of people in here I could have a full conversation with.
My favorite thing about going to concerts has always been looking around and thinking that there's a lot of people in here that are very much like me, a lot of people in here I could have a full conversation with.
I have a lot of reactions to the outside world that I don't feel like would be appropriate for songs: things I'm not interested in writing about, things I don't want to think about any longer than 15 or 20 seconds.
My dad, he worries a bit, usually with good reason. There were quite a few years there where he was probably trying to resign himself to fact that I wouldn't live too much longer, just because of the way I was living.
I'm not trying to steer people in a direction. I'm just trying to move them. Wherever it takes them, it doesn't matter to me. I just want them to be moved in one way or another, and that's a hard thing to do, I think.
Terrible things happen all of the time, and they can happen in a second. The best thing is to be prepared to react. If you try to control every little thing, you're going to end up miserable - and you're going to fail.
A lot of the world turns into checklists for me when I'm on the road. Like, OK, this person's alive, this person's fed, this person's good. Soundcheck is done. Everything becomes a checklist except for the actual show.
When I stopped drinking... there were so many things I had to face that I didnt even realize were part of my makeup before. When you do that and have any changes that severe, you lose a lot of things, both good and bad.
When I stopped drinking... there were so many things I had to face that I didn't even realize were part of my makeup before. When you do that and have any changes that severe, you lose a lot of things, both good and bad.
I like those kinds of songs that have details that you remember and that have stories that mean something and that open up into different levels philosophically. I like those kinds of movies, and I like those kinds of books.
When I was playing with the Truckers, a lot of really good things happened. And we had a good trajectory for a long time. For that kind of a band, for the kind of music that I've always made, we had a lot of success, I think.
I don't think I'd be happy if I were satisfied. I enjoy challenge, and I wouldn't say that I'm an ambitious person career-wise or financially, really. I would like to travel more comfortably, but that's really about all I need.
I think the live show is a different kind of catharsis. It's an event. It's supposed to be entertaining. To keep myself entertained, I like to play a rock n' roll show. I still kind of feel like I'm a rock n' roll musician anyway.
I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.
People love to be listened to and represented, and they love it when they feel like you have some of the same problems that they do. Everybody deals with things like romantic difficulties in relationships and death and cancer and abuse.
Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.
There are definitely some nights where the show is over, and you're on the bus or a hotel room, and it's sort of a shock to go from being in the atmosphere of a club or a theater and be at your own show to being by yourself in a hotel room.
When I hear somebody like Hayes Carll write a song that's touching and poignant and sad and funny all at the same time, it motivates me to step my game up and try to figure out a way to get more different emotions into one line or one song.
I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they're the guy who wrote that. You've got to be careful; if you don't want that to happen, don't write those songs.
Sometimes a song becomes rhetoric, but you have to really empathise. You also have to leave room for both sides of the argument: even if you're not telling the other side, you have to put that part in parentheses and make sure it's understood.
I think great songs appeal to people at any age. Kids love the Beatles, too. Kids love Tom T. Hall. Of course, Tom T. wrote some things that were specifically for kids. But I think kids recognize quality more than they get credit for sometimes.
My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher, and there was nothing really modern that went on under their roof. We watched television, but they were very picky about what we could watch - old Westerns and stuff that wasn't vulgar or violent at all.