I'm not technically adept at music, but I'd love to be part of a discussion of where progressive rock ends and country music begins.
Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.
I'm treating country music like it's a sport. I'm looking at where my competition is and realized I needed to work on my songwriting.
And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.
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.
There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.
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.
The whole world has changed much since the '80's. In the united States, rap music and country music dominate radio and that certainly wasn't the case in the early '80's.
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.
Country music is still your grandpa's music, but it's also your daughter's music. It's getting bigger and better all the time and I'm glad to be a part of it.
There is a fundamental situation in which the country has reached rock bottom, that a mother can't send her children out of the house in the morning. The country has reached rock bottom and this needs to be changed.
I don't like crying. I'm a country boy, and we're the product of our upbringing. As a boy, I was told that men don't cry.
When did 'Ask not what your country can do for you' become 'Ask only what your country will give you'?
Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.
This is my country, that is your country; these are the conceptions of narrow souls - to the liberal minded the whole world is a family.
There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.
If in a country, most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, then this country can hardly witness harmony and stability.
'The Hunger Games' takes place in Panem, a country which is part of America. It's post-apocalyptic. There's been a global war. The Panem country is what remains of this hugely destructive war.
An old friend met in a far country is like rain after drought.
Smoke in your own country is purer than fire in a foreign land.
Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people.
