Quotes from Sturgill Simpson

Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley - guys like that were huge influences.

I used to play a lot of electric guitar. I don't really consider myself a guitar player anymore. Then I got really into how the pickups work. And winding and de-winding Telecaster pickups. And then building Telecasters. And I became more fascinated with making them than I was with actually playing them. So it's a slippery slope.

The art is what can't be put on a timeline. You can't say, 'Well, I'm going to make a record in May because that's when the producer has a window.' So just recording and getting things out is paramount for me.

I just don't see myself as a songwriter or a country singer or any of those things anymore. It's more trying to express ideas and emotional textures.

I could go back to the railroad. I liked that job.

I had a great job with the railroad, a good salary.

I didn't graduate from college, so I might as well be on Atlantic Records, right?

I'm grateful to all the non-risk-takers.

Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three - so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.

I pretty much just hang out with the kid. I want, like three more, because that's all I ever want to do.

I never really had any grand aspirations of mainstream country success because I know what that entails, and I'd probably be too much trouble for people to work with. If I can just reach the point where I can get 200 or 300 people in small clubs and I'm carving out enough money to pay my bills, then I'm the happiest guy I know.

I tried to make a honky-tonk country record - rough-hewn, cut fast, and all analog - like I wasn't hearing anymore.

I worked for Union Pacific. I started out as a conductor at an intermodal switching facility outside of Salt Lake City. We'd pull in trains from all over the country, break them apart, consolidate the freight, and build other trains. It was great until I screwed up and took a management position. Then it became no fun very quickly.

You spend all this time reading or thinking or praying or searching or exploring.Maybe there's an Omega Point of love.

I'll never get tired of being told I sound like Waylon Jennings, but I don't hear it myself.

Music Row gets dragged through the dirt, but they're just trying to survive.

I'm very grateful, but at the same time, I'm glad all this happened when I'm 36 instead of 26 because I - I'm just such a homebody, and I just want to write songs and make the best record that I can.

My paternal grandfather, when he was in the army in World War II - he was over in the South Pacific, and he thought he was gonna die. And he wrote a letter to my grandmother and their newborn son, thinking he wasn't gonna come home.

Back home, playing music is never anything you imagine you can do for a living. It's what you do after work.

The only way I'm going to support my family is to tour. I love playing, don't get me wrong. That 90 minutes every night, that's free. We get paid to travel. But every night, I have to get myself locked in. There are a thousand people that don't want to be disappointed, because they have a lot of expectations.

You can embrace nostalgia and history and tradition at the same time - it has to progress or it can't survive.

I just have to do what it is going to make me happy, first and foremost - what is honest and what is sincere. Anybody that listens will hopefully connect with that.

London's been really good to me - England as a whole - but the Scots and the Irish especially are very appreciative because that's kind of where it all came from.

I find that I have to just kind of avoid the Internet as much as possible. And even more so, when I go and look at it, I remember why I should be avoiding it.