We have to do a much better job at keeping our jobs. And we have to do a much better job at giving companies incentives to build new companies or to expand, because they're not doing it.
I'm an introverted sort of writer.
I try to keep my eyes and ears open all the time for the bones of my next song: things people say, melodies I hear in my head, and little musical parts I may stumble across. I write them down or record them on my phone. Whatever I need to do to keep the idea for later when I have the time to sit down with it. So writing for me is a 247 pursuit.
I look for something universal in songs rather than something personal. I look for something that will give us a platform for live improvisation.
When I was young, my father told me I was living in a dream world. At the time, he was trying to straighten me up to fly right. Now I treasure the part of my life that is a dream world - the love of my children, my music - these loves can put you in a dreamy place. I embrace it.
I love Nashville, but I miss the Gulf Coast, the wetlands, and the Delta of Lower Alabama every day. Magnolia Springs is a sweet little town in reality, but, in my heart, it is a kind of mythological oasis. I relive the memory every time I cross the Magnolia River. My memory is probably not accurate, but it's a wonderful memory. So Magnolia Springs lives in my heart as a beautiful, cool, watery place.
I think we are all of the same opinion that "wherever you go, there you are," and if you are constantly searching for paradise outside of yourself, you will miss what is in your own backyard.
I used to flirt with girls just to get the guys circling around us. I'm getting out of it now. I have to look after my reputation.
I believe more and more that this business is about people. People, people. The idea is to make friends at the retail level, the warehouse level, let people see you exist, can form sentences and have an interest in something other than yourself.
I'm the kind of person that likes what I'm doing when I'm doing it.
I wish the English still possessed a shred of the old sense of humour which Puritanism, and dyspepsia, and newspaper reading, and tea-drinking have nearly extinguished.