In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.
It became a metaphor for the lives of the people in this film and for the Old West, for the abandonment that occurred in the early part of the 20th century.
It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.
It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music.
We started shooting, and then Jodie found out she was pregnant. Forest broke it to me - he'd gone to work and heard it on the radio! It seemed like the movie was doomed. But, like these characters, there was a disregard for all the signs along the way.
As a writer, I always tend to take the liberty and the great artistic luxury of a composite form of writing.
As an artist, you have to maintain focus and eliminate the distraction of second-guessing yourself based on the opinions of others.
Ironically, the success I've experienced at country radio has left me ostracized from pop and other formats of radio.
Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.
I'll never quit playing country music, or at least acknowledging it, always, as the cornerstone of what I am.
I embrace country music because of love, a love of what I came from.
I don't regret any of the musical decisions I have made.
Film acting has been a very pure experience, because you have to give the purest form of yourself as an artist.
We share something in common with the fabric of the whole universe that connects us.
However you arrive at the ability to ignore self-doubt - if you can acquire it or possess it or find it or discover it - move beyond self-doubt.
When I was in junior high, a foreign-history teacher started a theater class. So I got my feet wet there and through high school, so I was very fascinated with acting as a means of expression.
I played music and sang from my earliest memories. The first pictures of me show me wandering around with a guitar that was larger than I was, and it became almost second nature to me.
The actual work of recording a record or making a film just requires that you consciously block the time out to do that and nothing else. That's what I do.
Musicians exist independent of any of the marketing terms or the categorization.
My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.
