Underfunded, underwhelmed, and out of their league from the git-go, my parents took to home ownership like horse thieves to a hanging judge.
I feel like I'm a realized artist, but hey, the good news is I can get better, and I'm going to continue to aim for that.
To me, Hank Williams is the first rock-and-roll star.
There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.
I cannot say I'm a poet. That's for someone when they take in consideration where they can bestow 'poet' on. I can't do it. But I would be disingenuous if I didn't say that my intention is poetry.
Pretty much any artist that I know of that has found that mentor status, if they're generous and okay to bestow a bit of mentor-type information, it's do what you feel, not what you think.
My people came from western Tennessee and western Kentucky.
Of course, you can't teach songwriting. You can only encourage people to do it and help them to sort out for themselves what they want to achieve, and get a list of exercises together that improves the craft and gives them more access to the craft of writing good songs.
Since 'Houston Kid,' I've got a pretty good track record. Before that, I wrote some hit songs, but I didn't come into my own until I was about fifty. Before that, I had bursts of talent.
I have declared my loyalty to Americana.
I wouldn't go as far to say that anything that I've done is timeless.
My family was very poor. Strangely, though, my father was an enigma in that he was always working. He was not a ne'er-do-well. He wasn't lazy. He just couldn't hold on to money. It just, it was an enigma for him. He just, his pockets were always empty.
You start creating art through the people that are looking at you, trying to route it through their sensibilities or their eyes, and then it's not you anymore.
Violence was very much a part of my mother's upbringing - a little less so with my father's, but my father was an angry man when he was young. He was angry and frustrated and had no idea how to channel anger.
My father took me to see Hank Williams on December 14th, 1952. I was two years and four months of age. And I remember a little cool eddy of hair hitting my cheek, and I remember the smell of his hair oil, and I remember the mingling tonality of the small talk before the show started. Those are my memories.
My mother was an oral storyteller. She would tell stories over and over again.
My mother met my father at a Roy Acuff concert.
The more I'm dedicated to this work, the more I'm able to satisfy my deep need to create. And that's a pretty good thing. If you take half-decent care of yourself, that can propel you on into productive later years.
In my 15 minutes of fame around 'Diamonds and Dirt,' it was not a healthy time for me because of my insecurity.
Certainly, writing a book was challenging. It took me a long time to learn how to do it. It took me seven years to get a sense of how to wean myself off the process and trickery of songwriting. You realize that giant metaphors work in songs because you have so few words. Standing alone on a page, they threaten to be overblown in a hurry.
