I think Stockman is an interesting sort of amalgam.
We as songwriters are in the same position as a professional fisherman. Our fishing grounds are kind of fished out.
What has worked before is never as good as something that has never been tried before, even if it doesn't work.
The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs.
Even if chords are simple, they should rub. They should have dissonances in them. I've always used a lot of alternate bass lines, suspensions, widely spaced voicings. Dfferent textures to get very warm chords. Sometimes you're setting up strange chords by placing a chord in front of it that's going to set it off like a diamond in a gold band. It's not just finding interesting chords, it's how you sequence them, like stringing together pearls on a string. . . . Interesting chords will compel interesting melodies. It's very hard to write a boring melody to an interesting chord sequence.
Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong.
You certainly don't hear any country music on pop radio today. But for a while you did, and it was a lovely thing to have all the different genres of music cohabitating the Top 40 - the folk sound, The Beatles, the British sound, the Motown sounds, that kind of light country - it was a welcome relief after a few hard rock records. Everyone was sharing the airwaves, and I think it was a beautiful time for American music.
Outward failure may be a manifested variant of inward success.
I have tried to have a regular daily intake from my Bible, regardless of how late it is.
Spirituality is the science of the Soul.
When I sit with my students and meditate with them, I channel the kundalini directly into them. I bring them to plane after plane of consciousness. What they would do in 100 years of meditation, I can do in an hour with them.