Pastoral Resources

It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something.

As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.

I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.

I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Better than anything else in our culture, it enables fathers and sons to speak on a level playing field while building up from within a personal history of shared experience - a group history - that may be tapped into at will in years to come.

This music has been around since before the beard on Moses. I happed to do it very well and I happen to have a lot of groovy songs that I know people are going to dig. I know more about it than you do.

There are now grandmothers and grandfathers coming to see us because they are of that age, they grew up in the '50s and '60s and they bring their sons and their daughters to hear the songs they heard when they were young.

I wanted to write songs that were as good as the covers.

I guess a good song is a good song is a good song, ya know.

Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.

Me and Jerry left because we felt we weren't getting anywhere playing our old songs in tiny clubs. The group was getting stale and staying behind the times.

Chaplin was notoriously strict with his sons and rarely gave them spending money.

If my tongue were trained to measures, I would sing a stirring song.

You have to insulate yourself - I'm talking about from everything, people can be talking to you and you won't hear 'em - that's how you write a song. And I haven't been able to do that over here 'cause I'm so busy and then, when I am off, I want to get away from music.

No, my son's a songwriter and he does that.

You know, being an entertainer is partly being on the road, and a lot of your songs come from the road.

But I've got a lot of ideas, I bought me a ranch in Florida and I still have my farm in Ashland City, Tennessee so I'm gonna spend a little time at each one of those places and you'll probably hear some more songs out of me.