Music Quotes
The Songwriters Hall of fame, that's the one all the big-time writers get into, the really great stuff, the Broadway stuff and all that. That would be something, to get your name in there.
All the girls over there in Ireland are well versed in American country music. Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline are like king and queen over there.
Especially when you've got your own mail route, day after day, it was an easy place to write. It was like going to a library with no books. You're afforded to just go do your job, and you don't really even have to think about it. You know you're on the right street and you're at the right house, and you're putting the mail in the right box. That's where I wrote a lot of the early songs, walking on the mail route.
People would always tell me about minor chords - when you're writing a song, to put a minor chord in. For me, it's like doom, you know. You know somebody's gonna be extremely sick or die if there's a character in the song.
When I was writing the song, I thought that these people have entire lives in there. They're not writers, but they all have stories to tell. Some are very, very down deeper than others.
I knew Fred since I was 14 and was first going to the Old Town School, Fred used to work part-time in the store. Every time I wrote a song Fred would turn on his really good high-class tape recorder, reel-to-reel, and record it. So he's got recordings of me on guitar singing all my songs in his apartment long before I ever recorded for a recording company. I never found out what happened to the tapes.
From a broken relationship I was in. I could not understand what went wrong and I had to explain to myself, and I did it through this song. The next day I thought, Jesus, that's beautiful. I didn't recognize it at the time, it was just pouring out of me.
If there had been a tornado or something that took the town, it would've been the same song.
If you're out there day after day, going around playing the same places, you pretty much think you've reached your audience. But there's more people finding my music every day.
Even when I was a mailman. That job required no great skill, so once you got it down, you had a lot of free time to daydream and make up songs.
On the best day, there's no context for the moment. Often, the best writing and pieces have been lost to not having been digitized.
A lot of 'em are falling or getting ready to because all kinds of things. Mainly the distributors are getting bought up. And you're doing good if you're supporting yourself with an independent label, Right now, you're doing excellent.
My guitar is a mutation between a classic Fender Stratocaster guitar, which I played for years, and a Gibson solid-body like an SG or a Les Paul. It contains all sounds of the basic classic rock n' roll guitars. It does what I want it to do.
I don't think I've ever actually written from inspiration, actually had a song just go, 'Bing!' I only recall that happening to me twice - once was with 'Terrapin' and the other was 'Wharf Rat.' I mean, that's twice in a lifetime of writing!
I have all the patience in the world about Sirens. For me it's not a Grateful Dead project, it's a Me project.
I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.
You can't ride the rails anymore in this country, but you can follow the Grateful Dead.
I recognize that as a musician there is a certain chauvinism attached to it, which is the thing of, "I spent my time learning how to play. You didn't spend time learning how to play, therefore, you are not a musician."
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