Mat Kearney Quotes
-
I don't spend afternoons practicing my guitar to get better. I do read, though, to get inspiration for my lyrics.
-
From my experience, I've been honest about who I am and what I believe and the motivation behind my music. But I've played it in arenas that are for all people. I've pretty much stuck to that model my whole career.
-
I was an English major in college, so I really liked spoken word and poetry; it was what I did before I wrote music.
-
I grew up in Oregon, so there was always a lot of that folksy, Bob Marley stuff. There was a mural of Bob Marley on a wall at my high school.
-
There are people I love in Nashville and would not want to go a day without talking to, but I want to see the world.
-
I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.
-
I didn't start writing music until I was a sophomore in college. I would steal my roommate's guitar and sit on the front porch and kind of blend this weird spoken word and these little melodies over simple chords; that really started my whole journey as a musician.
-
The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.
-
I had the lyric 'Chip Don't Go' and a few words, and my wife came in and said that it sounded like a good song. I thought I'd finish writing it up and posting it to YouTube. I didn't realize it was going to take off like it did.
-
When 'Young Love' came out, I was really excited, and it has been really special.
-
Golf was big in my family.
-
When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out and connect with you. Great songs connect beyond genre and style.
-
I've had moments in my career when I've made more money and had more success than at other times, but I've realized being happy has very little to do with any of that.
-
When I barely got into college, the one thing I could do was write, so I became an English major.
-
My first album was hip-hop influenced, and my second was more of a singer-songwriter album.
-
I can't help but do things my own way.
-
There's something incredibly vulnerable about middle school for me. We're really impressionable during that period. The cement's still wet, so to speak, and a lot of things later in life are born during that season.
-
Money definitely does not equal success in recording.
-
It's a job, and it's challenging. But I love music and creating. That's why I got into music.
-
For my father, he didn't know what 'Grey's Anatomy' was. He didn't know who John Mayer was. But when I showed up on the 'Law & Order' TNT promo spot, he thought, 'Wow, my son has made it.'
-
I thought my second record was good, but it didn't have that smash hit we did on the first one that somehow found its way onto tons of formats of radio stations.
-
I don't know how much I'm connected to the hip-hop scene, but I definitely lend from that urgency.
-
You write these songs which are really dear to you about your family or friends, loved ones, and then you get this call, and they say, 'It's perfect for two vampires making out in the back of a car.' It's some random TV show, and so I say, 'Oh, yeah, perfect - that's what I meant it for.'
-
I read about two reviews early on when my first record came out, and it just freaked me out, good and bad, so I've never really kept up with that side of it.