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 love tape. It's another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.
I walked in, looked around, and the navy recruiter was a really hot brunette, so I signed up with her.
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.
I don't pretend to be an astrophysicist or anything, even though I do read about certain things like metaphysics and cosmology that I've always just been really interested in. I don't pretend to be able to sit down and pontificate on any of these subjects.
I someday hope to find the time and coin to invest more of my creative energy towards the visual media side of releasing music.
Saviours get crucified.
I've been reading about the idea of cyclical lives - it matches up to the idea of string theory and a multiverse. So I wanted to write a record about that instead of another song about broken hearts and drinking.
I saw Dolly Parton play at the Glastonbury Festival to about 120,000 people. It was an ocean of human beings. I was a mile away from the stage, and I swear to God, I could feel her energy.
I thought it was hilarious when 'Brace for Impact' was released, and people said I had abandoned country, even though the song is dripping with pedal steel. If anything, that tells me I'm making progress.
Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley - guys like that were huge influences.
Let's just cut a live record with three microphones in four days and talk about lizards and aliens. If I had taken that idea to even an independent label, I don't see a label out there that would've said, 'Oh yeah, that sounds great. We know how to market this.'
It's a long road, so we are just trying to stay focused and grounded and keep moving forward. I'll take it, though.
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.
There's a lot going on in country music, with indie-label hipsters and underground bloggers arguing their interpretations of what country is, and pop-country stars defending themselves. That deserves to be poked fun at.
I want people to focus on listening, not the image. And I want to play to everyone: rednecks, dubstep kids, punk rockers, and people who like as-real-as-it-gets country music.
That might be completely self-indulgent, to write your first major-label debut as a dedication to your family. But, you know, that's where my heart was.
I'd love to make short film videos pushing the conventional standards of what a country music video can be.
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.
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.
