To me, there are 3 parts of the album process: writing, recording, and my favorite part: getting to sing the songs with the fans every night.
When I was first starting out, I drove myself around the country in my Honda Civic, playing anywhere that would have me. This is a chance to strip the songs down to their roots and let the audience hear them the way I write them.
My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.
What I need more in my culture and in my life right now is hope, and so I tend to write to that. I'll always end up bending more toward optimism.
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I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.
When I feel like every day when I get up I'm writing songs, that's the time to make a record.
I've always thought, it's the artist that write the songs and make the records. And it's our responsibility to set the tone for what's happening in the industry. And I take that seriously.
Eventually I would like to reach the stage where I don't have to write about love and kisses and all that stuff. I wish I could write about really ultimate things. That's where I think all of us want to go, really. All the groups seem to be heading towards a kind of pop music that deals with ultimate things.
I write, but I also act.
I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me.
I started acting when I was in high school, started writing when I got to New York in 1975.
I write for an audience that likes what I like, reads what I read, thinks about the things I think about. In many ways, this puts me in opposition to the people who go to the theater generally.
Yeah I was aware of the book, but hadn't read it. So as soon as I'd finished the script, I got a copy of the book and read that. My wife had read it and she loves it, so that was a good sounding board. I like her writing style, she's such a page-turner. I enjoyed The Constant Princess as well. I think she's great. The books are very popular with women and I can see why.
My background was producing and writing and performing in television when I started out, and I really missed that, that whole creative process that comes from sort of 'me' storytelling.
It's hard to write any good song. It seems more rewarding, or maybe just easier, to write sad ones.
As a producer you can be more objective about the songs because you didn't write them.
I don't really need to appeal to some stockbroker, and I always sort of root for the underdog. I probably consider all that when I'm writing, but it's not in the forefront of my brain.
I get ill when I'm writing because I'm so focused on it, and it can take a year or two. Often, I knock out the first draft very quickly. I can do it in five to six weeks. Then, it takes a year of rewriting it and rewriting it.
I think writing is one of the toughest things.
I think when you write a script, you can't help but pick up on what is happening in the press at that time and what's going on in the newspapers, so you reflect on that and you feed it into your stories in some way.
If you wish to write, write.
When I went to school, I was already reading and writing. In fact, I was offended that the other kids couldn't.
Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.
I was the audience he wanted to reach. Gram Parsons' writing brought his own personal generations poetry and vision into the very traditional format of country music, and he came up with something completely different
