Pastoral Resources

One of the things that I think is such a constant in country music is that the song is so much a story. I believe it is supposed to be based around a story.

Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist.

One song will launch you, but you don't want to be a one-song artist.

Considering the amount of information we're bombarded by, it's amazing if a song can transcend time.

I kept looking to do songs that were written years ago and would live or outlive all of us, and the one thing they had in common was Sinatra.

The whole industry evolves around a great song.

Whoever best serves the song is going to be served by the song.

When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song.

My son is not wild about going back to Iraq, but he'd sure rather do that than sacrifice all that he and his fellow soldiers have accomplished by leaving too early and inviting chaos.

We had offers to go everywhere and we could have done them. But what would have been the point? We were tired. We had worked hard and needed a break before we got stale. We spent six months at home and writing songs.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

Ethiopia didn't just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, 'Would you take my son with you?' He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

People have said to me, You can't write songs. You can't play an instrument. But I've got 10 gold records.

Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

I've had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.

But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

I put myself into character for my songs.