Pastoral Resources

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.

There aren't any rules, as far as anything-and that applies especially to writing songs, whatever gets the point across. So you're just kind of brought up to feel-in any field, if you say you can do it, do it. There it is.

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.

Artists who write songs... what they're going through usually comes through in their music.

I started writing songs at age 15.

I'm a lover of songs.

I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album.

I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

Some of the songs I do once in a while that I kinda... my set list is basically like my hits, there is a good reason why they are there; people really like them.

Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing.

Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move.

I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.

For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving.

I've written songs about things that nobody else has ever written about.

It's great to hear from people who have been touched by these songs. It has been good to know that the Lord is using this in ways I am not even aware of.

I want to be as honest as I can about the things I've been through - the sorrows and joys, victories and defeats - and to use those experiences as a well to draw from. Hopefully, the songs that result from that kind of writing will be songs that mean something to others.

Since I was the solo artist as well as the writer for the songs, I figured I had enough credits on it already.

If I give myself a chore, for instance, when I was writing the songs for Shameless, I said to myself, Now, every day for 90 days you have to write a song; good, bad or indifferent. So that was really helpful.