You can't second-guess your audience. You can only do what you think is right. If you do that, your audience will appreciate you.
You have to be really good to get away with smashing a guitar.
You don't have to have anything in common with people you've known since you were five. With old friends, you've got your whole life in common.
Look around and you will see this world is full of creeps like me.
It's important to be successful enough to be able to keep doing what you love.
What would we do if we didn't try? We have to try.
My favorite Aggie joke? I'm sorry I don't understand the question
There's no bad luck, There's just the luck you've found.
It's difficult to get started-when it comes to dealing with an unknown quantity, people are reluctant to trust their own opinion. It helps if two or three people give you a boost.
I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard.
I played guitar when I was young and never really considered it as a way to make a living
I'm really in no danger of being perceived as a famous movie actor!
Man, I need to impress her, cause I'd like to undress her.
If you forget the words to your own song, you can always claim artistic license. Forget the words to the national anthem and you're screwed.
I married her just because she looks like you.
Barbecue sauce is like a beautiful woman. If it's too sweet, it's bound to be hiding something.
When you have a solid upbringing and a strong sense of place, that sustains you. My sense of home never leaves me.
Horses teach you patience and how to do things the right way so you can get the right result.
I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life.
I don't know where creativity comes from, but I think everybody has the ability to be creative. I think what's important about creativity starts when you're very young and how we're allowed to experience our imagination. The people who bring us up and teach us are fundamental in either encouraging creativity or discourging creativity. My imagination was always encouraged.
Denice Franke is a sensitive and compelling singer and songwriter.
Singing your own songs is all about individual expression
The loss of Jerry Garcia feels like the end of an era in the same way it felt when Elvis died and John Lennon was killed.
I don't know what it is about the shower that generates creative thoughts. Maybe it's the hot water. Maybe it's being unencumbered even by the restriction of clothing.
She was ugly from the front, and I said ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. Well, I could handle it behind her.
I'm a very lucky man. I get to do the thing I want most in life, write songs and sing them for people, and ride bikes. I love my family. I love my home. I get to work with people I've admired my whole life. It's a pretty good life.
If Ford is to Chevrolet what Dodge is to Chrysler, what Corn Flakes are to Post Toasties, what the clear blue sky is to the deep blue sea, what Hank Williams is to Neil Armstrong - can you doubt we were made for each other?
I joke that I've never been burdened by having an actual hit. There's something to that. My records have sold enough to make the record company money to help me keep my job. But I've never had anything so firmly ingrained in the mind of the public that I'm expected to repeat it.
Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.
Writin songs is like a mystery. The most difficult thing to do is have a good idea. If you have a decent idea, the songs are the easy part. Actually having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along. There are just some ideas that you get that are really hard to edit out; it's hard to stop thinking about some bad ideas. So you just finish it and you end up putting it on a record.
Every afternoon, I was in the pasture with cattle or fishing and shooting my BB gun. That kind of freedom allows imagination to develop.
My music has always been sort of in-between categories. Sometimes record stores - back when there were record stores - they'd put my records in the country music section, but other record stores would put my records in the pop or even the rock section. As long as it's in the store somewhere, I'm OK with it.
Beyond hoping that someone will like one of my songs, I don't think about how a song will be received. I just hope that, when somebody hears one of my songs, they'll want to hear it again.
Fortunately, I've never had a job
Both my parents worked, so I was home alone a lot, and I would listen to their records. They belonged to the Columbia House record club, so they had records!
I am limited by what I can think of to do-my choices are not so great.
Everybody's career is different. In this new age of being able to talk to the whole world at once, the possibilities are staggering, really, to be able to do things yourself. But I've always enjoyed my relationship with the record company.
That's right, you're not from Texas. But Texas wants you anyways.
It's true that I did get the girl, but then my grandfather always said, Even a blind chicken finds a few grains of corn now and then.
When someone tells me what he or she was doing the first time they heard a song of mine, then I've done a good job. If my song becomes about your life, then I'm successful.
I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.
I've been lucky to be able to make the records I've wanted to make. The record company has never pressured me to cut certain songs.
I don't feel like I'm on a mission. I'm trying to play music that I like to play and like to listen to.
It's really a lot easier to write about things that are problematic. Who wants to hear how happy you are?
I've never been ready to do a single thing I've ever done in my life. I haven't been prepared enough, haven't studied enough, haven't known enough. You can never be ready. There's just so much to know.
When I first was trying to play the clubs around Houston to start playing my own songs, songwriters like Eric Taylor and Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt and Don Sanders were just really encouraging to me and would let me sit in with them during their sets and introduce me to the person that owned and booked the club.
I enjoyed hearing people do their own songs. I became attracted to singer-songwriters. I became interested in them as people; was curious about what they wanted to say.
Who keeps on loving you when you've been lying, saying things that ain't what they seem? God does, but I don't. God will, but I won't.
The most important thing you can do as a performer is to be yourself, or be an onstage version of yourself. If youre not being true to yourself, and somebody likes that other version of you, youre kind of stuck.
I'm really just trying to do things that I enjoy. I'm trying to play music that I like to play and like to listen to. I just have to think if I like those different kinds of music, there are other people who aren't so different from me.
If it's not too late, make it a cheese-burger
I like my audience. I always feel when up on stage performing that I could enjoy having a cup of coffee with any one of them.
Home is where my horse is.
Kemo Sabe, kiss my ass.
