'Tis easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows along like a song; But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.
With 'Sherry,' we were looking for a sound. We wanted to make the kind of mark that, if the radio was playing one of our songs, you knew who it was immediately. But I didn't want to sing like that my whole life.
My grand plan is that I can master having a better life by making sure I have a regular flow of songs. Then I can give myself time to tour or celebrate or write a film score.
You have moments of grief in life, and if you can put pen to paper and capture that, that's something wonderful. I can revisit actual songs about past deaths, and I know that emotion is as true now as it was then.
You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.
Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.
In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.
I don't think of them as teenage songs. The things that happen to you in high school are the same things that happen your entire life. You can fall in love at 60; you can get rejected at 80.
But at this phase of my life, I want to write and not have to think about whether a song is going to be a hit. I want to explore the music that inspires me, and I don't want to ape myself.
For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.
For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion.
I don't know if there are artists out there who love their own records. I haven't met any, and I'm kind of extreme in the other direction, but therein lies the impetus to keep working and keep making new songs and new records.
I got to see Jack White. I love his new album. There's a song on the album called 'I Think I Should Go to Sleep' that my son loves. We play it on a loop around the house, and he just bounces around.
I'm definitely gonna do another solo record at some point. 'Flamingo' wasn't just me dipping my toes in the water. I really loved it. It was successful, and that helps, but I love those songs, and I miss singing them.
Some people come to our shows and think they're gonna spend the night just listening to love songs, and they're pretty much surprised cause we do a lot of rock and roll.
'If I Should Love Again' - I was just so impressed with myself writing something like that. It wasn't a single and people didn't really know about it, but it's a beautiful song and that's part of what I'm loving.
I try to make an album that reflects what I love about country music. It's not just all about happy parties all the time. There are some sad songs.
I'd really started hating music. I'd started hating all the songs, hating being in the industry, hating doing the shows. So I had to learn to love music again if I wanted to continue doing this.
The jazz rhythm won't be understood by the bulk of my audience. That's the problem. We can get away with maybe one tune a night. It depends on where we place it. A song like 'Beyond the Sea,' the fans love that. It's fresh.
When we're in trouble, it's usually a line from a song that saves us. I wish it was sermons, but, I'm sorry, it's not. When you're in crisis, what comes to mind is 'O love that would not let me go.' You know?
I grew up watching 'Grease,' and 'Grease 2.' I fantasized about walking through school halls and busting out in a song. At that time, I was too much of a chicken to do so. I'd love the challenge now.
