Pastoral Resources

There are no rules to writing a song.

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.

The thing I try to do the most is to play in terms of the song and play in terms of what I'm hearing.

My musical heroes are people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie who wrote and sang real songs for real people; for everyone, old, young, and in between.

Then on to all the terrific american songwriters, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles, from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon. Whoever wrote and sang in the song form I have appreciated.

There's nothing like a good cheating song to make me want to run home to be with my wife.

My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.

Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.

I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

My version of 'Georgia' became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching.

There is nothing like singing a song that 20,000 people know and are singing back to you.

When I was singing Jamie's Cryin', people were going out of their mind because it was the first time they got to see Eddie, Michael and Alex play those songs. That was a thrill.

I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

You can tell the difference between songs that were created in a garage and songs that were created in the studio.

Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl.

They would wake me up when I was sleeping, and say sing a song for our friends. I had a sweet voice, I had a nice little tenor voice. God knows what I sang, but my whole family would admire me.

If you're writing anything decent, it's in you, it's your spirit coming out. If it's not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it's not a good song done with any conviction.

The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation. I can't contrive a song.