I can't sing like Aretha Franklin as much as I wish I could. And I don't sing like Etta James and the Judds as much as I wish I could.
When I'm outside gardening, it can be so inspiring. I think of words and melodies. It's peaceful. Every singer-songwriter should find something outside of music that makes them as happy as gardening makes me.
Instinct is still important, but now I can easily identify problems like cliches and mixed metaphors, and I have a broader palette to work off of.
In the past, I was free to write in quiet and in the space wherever my desk was at. I could leave my instruments out. In the past, my writing was super private; I never liked showing my work at its earliest stages.
I consider myself more of a rock 'n' roll fiddler.
It helped my lyric writing so much studying poetry. I thought I knew what poetry was before I immersed myself in it. Poetry is meditative. It's reflective.
I had no idea I was gonna be a songwriter, because I was too young to know my own evolution. I started playing the violin as a way to express myself because I didn't have a lot of vocabulary when I was 14.
I wasn't getting any work as a songwriter in Texas because I was only known as a fiddle player.
After the Texas Playboys and during that time, I had this band in college that I was in called Thrift Store Cowboys. It was me and a couple other dudes would write the songs.
Of course, life experience changes and adds to writing. And observations change too, where you put yourself in relation to other people.
I don't know if you've ever shown anyone your work before you're done with it, but it can be very uncomfortable.
The goal at the end of the day is for all of us to find a little bit more peace in life and with ourselves and to feel a little more comfortable in the world.
You know when you have a child and then as you get older, your parents start becoming more like your friends and then telling you things they wouldn't have told you when you were 14 or 15, answering questions about the past or whatever.
I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.
Because the beauty of songs, I think, is if you do it right a lot of people can relate to it in their own way and make their own meaning out of things.
When you name a beast, sometimes it makes it less bestial.
I don't really have anything nice to say about pop-country radio.
Maybe, whatever influence we have, other songwriters or women or whatever can feel like they can have a place too, I guess. Or that they don't have to do things the way that we've been taught we have to do them.
My whole life had been bands that were men-centric - and that's a great thing, I know a lot about how to handle myself - but I think I was missing something.
I have no choice in what direction my music goes, honestly, as all I get is what I'm given. I start writing the songs, and they start presenting themselves the way they want to be heard.
