Quotes from Rodney Crowell

My people came from western Tennessee and western Kentucky.

For me, my career has never been about what I've done. But it's been about becoming, achieving, and pushing myself further.

Over the years, I've come to realize that writing 'I Ain't Living Long Like This' was an exercise in combined musical influence, mostly that of Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan - artists no one has ever heard of.

My father took me to see Hank Williams on December 14th, 1952. I was two years and four months of age. And I remember a little cool eddy of hair hitting my cheek, and I remember the smell of his hair oil, and I remember the mingling tonality of the small talk before the show started. Those are my memories.

To me, Hank Williams is the first rock-and-roll star.

Favorite country singer of all time... Hank Williams... Well, then there's Willie Nelson. Can I have three? I can't do one. Then if I have three, I'll need five. Hank Williams for sure. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

People ask me, 'What is the mystique of the Texas songwriter?' Well, we ran barefoot from March until November. I think there's something about being a barefoot kid that gets you closer to the place - you take root.

You know I love to spend my mornings, like sunlight dancing on your skin

To be well loved is to be free of the evil lurking around the next darkened corner. Every child should know that feeling.

Some say God's sittin' up in heaven mad as a hornet 'bout how we actin' down here, but I don't think he's mad at all. Ain't nobody mad coulda ever made somebody half as special as you.

With my grandmother and Charlie, though, I experienced love as something tangible between myself and another human being. In the gently powerful presence of these two exceptional souls, love was made easy for my understanding. Love was the source of their ability to mesmerize me so completely.

What people think of me is none of my business. Rodney Crowell paraphrasing the Greek Stoic Philosopher, Epictetus 55-135 AD

Conversation is a really good way to get things done.

When I go back to seek inspiration - whether it be from Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, the Beatles, Hank Williams, Ray Charles or Bob Dylan - it's from the performance. Those artists are in the studio playing their instrument and singing. There's no going back and redoing the vocals.

Underfunded, underwhelmed, and out of their league from the git-go, my parents took to home ownership like horse thieves to a hanging judge.

My parents were sharecrop farm kids with no education - seventh, eighth grade.

Certainly, writing a book was challenging. It took me a long time to learn how to do it. It took me seven years to get a sense of how to wean myself off the process and trickery of songwriting. You realize that giant metaphors work in songs because you have so few words. Standing alone on a page, they threaten to be overblown in a hurry.

I wrote a song a good long while ago, 'I Ain't Livin' Long Like This,' that has been around and been recorded by a lot of people, but it was basically childhood memory.

As I started to study old blues recordings and really pay attention to my favorites, it really started to come to me that all of my favorite pieces of music weren't produced, they were performed. The producer is nearly invisible: no thumbprint other than the composition and the performers.

I feel like I'm a realized artist, but hey, the good news is I can get better, and I'm going to continue to aim for that.

I wouldn't go as far to say that anything that I've done is timeless.

I concern myself with timelessness all the time. If you're not swinging for museum quality, your mind is not in the right place. It doesn't mean you get there, but at least it's the intent.

Time to go inward, man, I hope I have the nerve, to take inventory of the causes that I serve.

If you get a song right for its usage at the time, it can be useful to others. ...Those songs are more friendly to other artists looking for material.