Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

You can always boil down the life of a musician to touring, playing, and writing.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

France was very opposite of the show-business experience I'd been living; I was anonymous and alone. I wore no makeup, wore the same clothes every day. And I wrote and wrote and wrote.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I think you need a concrete, real-world metaphor to talk about inner life without feeling like a jerk.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I wanted to dedicate myself completely to the things that matter to me and let everything else go, and I think that's a really rewarding thing.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I think you have to ask questions that are scary to ask, and you cannot apologize for that, and you cannot worry what anyone else thinks about your journey.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I really love music, and I definitely love playing music and getting to be a part of music.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

Music is like a really sacred, awesome thing. That first 45 minutes to two hours that you're on stage spending time with music every night is always really great.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I think that there are a lot of things that come along with being a musician, but I don't want to whine about them. I don't want to complain about my job.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

My point of view as a writer has to be a lot more ego-less than just like being some performer on stage with a hairdo.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I'm always kind of surprised how much I'm associated with country music.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I think, at the end of the day, I have an outsider's heart.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I was thinking about how a playlist is really so inadequate as opposed to a mixtape because it takes seventeen days to really make a mixtape with a homemade cover that you like and that you'd give away.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

Sometimes when you're writing on a ukulele, you're in a totally new land, rhythmically or melodically.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I'm a writer, first and foremost, and I sort of take my cues from the songwriters of the '70s, who are talking about what's really important to them.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

As much as I love being a singer-songwriter, I love throwing down on stage and letting it all out.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I travel in a Ford Econoline van with a trailer. So it's not quite so glamorous.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

My work is has always been very, very personal.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

In France, I discovered that I love writing in the city. There's such an intensity to being in the city that matches the intensity of what you're experiencing in your head.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

The thought of making work that's easily consumed and quickly forgotten - what's the point? I want my work to be cohesive, to age and improve like old leather.

Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt

I don't want to be overly philosophical, but I think there are things you earn for yourself as you go.