I carry music in my head, so I don't need more. It drives me nuts that, in hotels or on boats, people seem to think you need music 24 hours a day.
I start with the subject matter I want to write about. Then I make a musical base for that and create an atmosphere with the music. Once I've done that, the lyrics come last.
Woodstock was the antithesis of what the music industry turned into. And if anyone tries to tie another Woodstock festival to an obnoxious sponsor, I'll be out protesting again.
I'm confident in my intentions and why I'm making music. I'm not making music because I want to be on your TV screen or the cover of your magazine.
I don't want children cursing. I'm very strict on my nieces and my little brother. They have to listen to clean versions of music. Even my music.
And once the music is out there, when you're selling a record and selling music and people are going to do whatever they want with it, it's kind of hard to resist certain opportunities, especially in the record market now.
In a way, it's my way of dealing with, finding closure with Grateful Dead music, and giving thanks in a way to Jerry and Bob and all the guys in the band for making up this wonderful music.
Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.
All old music was modern once, and much more of the music of yesterday already sounds more old-fashioned than works which were written three centuries ago.
My wife grew up loving country music, so I always run songs by her whether I wrote it or if somebody pitched it to me.
Most artists have contracts directly with the record company, and when they do music, all of their music is owned by the record company. But I did mine through a production company.
If my musical tastes are continuing to grow up, and I am not really too interested in the music that my kids listen to, then I assume that the audience is doing the same.
I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.
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.
I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.
Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music.
Hip-hop is a beautiful thing. I think that the music genre itself has created more millionaires than any other music genre before it, especially in our community.
And music has always been incredibly cathartic for me, whether it's writing my own stuff or singing other people's music; it's very freeing.
That internal ache is the starting point of country music. If it's a happy song and I can still feel sad in it? That's my favorite.
I believe that music is a spiritual language. My everyday self is pretty mundane and boring, but when I'm making music it allows for me to communicate a kind of transcendence that I can't communicate otherwise.
I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.
