Strangely enough, I've become a Metallica fan.
I can't make a perfect record. When I try to, I bleed all the feeling out of it.
I've finally figured out how to make a Rodney Crowell record, and that's let it be, leave the mistakes.
Conversation is a really good way to get things done.
I grew up poor in East Houston. I used to be ashamed of it, but I'm not anymore. It's kind of a badge of courage now.
Favorite country singer of all time... Hank Williams... Well, then there's Willie Nelson. Can I have three? I can't do one. Then if I have three, I'll need five. Hank Williams for sure. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.
I read Nabakov for style, Mary Karr for heart and resonance of where I come from. She's from the same part of the world that I'm from. Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway, to read the masters.
When I write a song with somebody else in mind, it's putting the cart before the horse. The way I write best is when I allow the song to tell me what it wants to be.
The chances of getting Townes to like it were very remote. When I wrote 'Til I Gain Control Again,' Townes Van Zandt sort of nodded. And I thought, 'Yes!'
I think, in the middle of the '90s, I made a couple of records where I tried to figure out what I thought the radio wanted from me. They weren't my best records by any stretch of the imagination. It didn't take me too long to figure out, 'Whoa, back up, dude. Just go back to following your heart, and it will all be OK.'
When I was 22 years old, and I first got to Nashville, women or girls were objects. It was a conquest. My emptiness inside and the external manifestation of my ego was to somehow conquer women.
I made this record in the late '80s called 'Diamonds and Dirt,' and it was a big hit. It had five No. 1's, and it was my commercial peak, really.
Life can be either of two things: What it makes of you or what you make of it.
Memory is revisionist, you know. 'The Houston Kid' was based on true things that happened. But I know - from writing a memoir that I've been working on for awhile - that reconstructing memory is revisionism.
I've said very openly that the first aspect of my artistry to arrive was writing. It took me a good number of years to find my voice.
With 'Fate's Right Hand,' I think I reached a level of completeness in forming and articulating ideas at around the same time I reached a place where I could match it with my singing voice. It was a kind of coming together.
As a songwriter, metaphor is instinctual.
I'm enough of a southeast Texas boy - there's enough white trash in my blood that when somebody gives me money to make a record, I feel like I have to please them instead of myself.
I have a history, and I am proud of my legacy as a songwriter, all of the songs that I've brought forth into our culture. I'm proud of that.
Adolescence in our culture for a young woman, for a girl, is a hard road.
