This should have been a red flag, I realize in retrospect. Working really hard on anything is, by definition, not cool.
This wasn't how I imagined things going. But imagination is so often no match for the absurdity, the randomness, the tragedy of reality.
I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.
The divergence of songs in the new population away from those in the progenitor population would only be prevented if these processes were balanced by repeated immigration and subsequent breeding: song flow.
I remember seeing the song in some diners on the selection gadget that plays records at the table while you were eating. We were never told if the songs ever got on any charts.
I didn't have bands that I was playing with growing up, so I learned to try to adapt and play these songs that were guitar songs on the piano, and sing them.
I had this song called Helter Skelter, which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise.
I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.
I always like story songs, Dolly Parton, Tom T. Hall, Mel Tillis, Red Stegall, when they'd do their story songs. I was totally enthralled.
Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn't that unbelievable? That's 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
You can say a lot more with a poem than you can with a song, but with a song you can really be more powerful with it. You can express it a lot more powerfully.
Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.
When I'm on stage, the songs that we've chosen to play from the back catalog are things that still resonate with me, and matter to me. And the songs that I couldn't be a part of, we don't play anymore.
Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.
I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane.
The songs were really complicated. I used to meet people in bar bands who were trying to play our songs and they were really struggling with it. Technically it was really difficult stuff.
Gospel songs to me are about the mansion in the sky, and washed in the blood of Christ's crimson blood, songs that are filled with biblical wording that's no longer understood by a lot of people.
The same song can have drastically different feels and personalities just by changing some minor things. A different drumbeat or some vocal overdub could completely transform the song.
Once I'd chosen the songs, it seemed like it would just be a question then of recording them. But it's a case of trying to re-invent the songs; taking them in different directions.
If I'm focusing on playing and enjoying the song, then it always goes well. I get lost in the song, and the performance is so much better. If the focus becomes not making a mistake, then it just feels rigid to me.
Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.
