When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why th...
Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.
A musical, like most religions, provides the audience or followers with a sense of belonging. Religious services, on the other hand, with their staged performances, invigorating songs, popular wisdom and shared experience, are almost a form of commun...
Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.
It definitely helps to have the acting experience going into singing, because when you're singing, you have to portray the emotion you were feeling when you wrote the song. They're the same thing, in a way; it's expressing your emotions through words...
As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
I'm nosey, and I have a great imagination. So it's not necessarily things I have to go through, but it's things people I know or my family is going through, and I hear about it, and I think, 'That sounds like a great song.'
They would wake me up when I was sleeping, and say sing a song for our friends. I had a sweet voice, I had a nice little tenor voice. God knows what I sang, but my whole family would admire me.
There's a song called 'Live Blogging the Himmel Family Bris.' I kind of went for it here in terms of - it was really fun to be explaining ritual circumcision in Nashville - a lot of brises are done in hospitals, but many are done in people's homes, a...
I could play it safe by recording songs that are familiar, but am I expanding myself as an artist by doing covers? It's a catch-22. It's called show business: The word 'business' is in it, and you've got to be a businessman. But then again, you have ...
There's a lot that goes into being Tim McGraw or Kenny Chesney. They have great songs, their show is great, they're very fit. When you look at somebody who takes care of themselves, takes care of their business, that's what every CEO would do.
Writing is not work. In fact, there's nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.
I didn't go to drama school or anything, and I learned on the job. And it's nice to have the chance to pretend to be other people. As a singer, though, I feel there's much more of me in that. I've written the songs, I'm singing them, I'm exposing my ...
I think some people record songs and make records a certain way to cater to radio. If you're born to make commercial music that's cool. But if you're born to not make commercial records, maybe you're meant to cater to another market.
I do think sometimes there's danger in guest appearance mania. I've seen too many examples that sound cool on paper, like 'Oh, get that guy to sing the hook on that guy's song,' and then that's all it is. It's a cool idea that sounds good on paper.
I'm usually really drawn to a song, and I know it would be good to cover if it sounds like something that I could write, or I wished I could write. Sometimes a writer just sounds like they're in your head, and that is really cool for me.
How many of the original songs survive intact from the slave cabins? Probably not many in their original form. Time has transformed them like light in a prism. What we hope to present is a version of those spirituals, and they speak not just to black...
Whether as victim, demon, or hero, the industrial worker of the past century filled the public imagination in books, movies, news stories, and even popular songs, putting a grimy human face on capitalism while dramatizing the social changes and confl...
I'm not really a knob-twiddler. I always work with an engineer; I'm not super hands-on when it comes to mixing boards and computers. I'm much more about what I'm hearing and what it needs to be like. I deal with songs and ideas and instruments.
These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.
