Quotes from Keith Whitley

Shortly after I started in bluegrass, Ricky Skaggs and I got together and the bluegrass career just snowballed. Being 15 or 16 and making good money playing music was pretty attractive.

I got into bluegrass music when I was 14, as a way to get into a band. My brother and I had a band and our own radio show, and that's what was popular.

I don't remember ever not singing. It's just as natural as breathing for me.

When I came to Nashville, my personal life went to hell.

You may not hear much bluegrass on the surface of my music, but I feel the emotion I put in a song comes from bluegrass. Bluegrass taught me to interpret a song, not just sing it.

I don't remember ever not wanting to be a country singer. Even as a little kid, that was my dream.

I did so many crazy things while drinking.

I believe in 'Hard Livin'.' The song has a lot of potential. I sang it on the road for about a year before I put it on an album. The crowds really seemed to like it.

Lyrics mean a lot to me, and I won't record a song unless I can feel it. That's something I learned from Carter Stanley. Even when he wasn't perfect technically, he got inside a song and sold it emotionally.

I keep progressing with each record, and that's a positive sign.

You have to come to terms with yourself as an artist and know what you do best.

Even when I was 3 or 4 years old, I'd go out riding in the car with mom and dad, and I already knew all the songs off mom's Hank Williams and George Jones records by heart. I remember just sitting in the back seat and singing them at the top of my lungs.

I grew up listening to my mother's collection of Hank Williams, George Jones and Marty Robbins records.

My manager, my band members, we're all good friends. You need that because a lot of times an artist will be so sheltered he will lose touch with what the fans want.

Everyone falls in love, everyone gets their heart broken.

It's not so uncommon for me to get so wrapped up in a song that I cry several times when I sing them. That's the difference between my music and some of the other folks.

We had sold a lot of copies of the 'Miami' album without being racked by some of the big distributors.

I laid my country music aside for quite a while... because bluegrass audiences didn't care to hear it. But it just kept haunting me.

We did the 'L.A. to Miami' album, with the song 'Miami, My Amy,' which really saved my life as far as confidence goes. It gave me a hit. But it wasn't really what I was about - and I think deep down inside I knew it, even if I didn't want to face it.

I feel like I have to create the Keith Whitley sound. That doesn't mean I can't borrow from the people I grew up listening to, but it doesn't serve any purpose to sing the same kind of songs they sang. When you do that, it's going to come out sounding like an imitation, whether it's meant to or not.

Lorrie came along, which is the best thing that ever happened to me. Because of her, I straightened up my life.

I learned to love bluegrass, but my first love stayed hard country.

I had a rock and roll band as a kid. What I wanted to be in was a country band, but in Sandy Hook, Ky., you're hard-pressed to find a steel guitar player or a drummer.

They say country music stands for more than the rural life. It's about life, period, whether lived in a high-rise or a hollow. I don't think rural or urban has that much to do with it.