Jason Isbell Quotes
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I feel like for me to write songs that I would be interested in as a listener, there has to be tension, and there has to be some kind of push and pull between reality and the potential of disaster.
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I like not having to worry about paying the bills, but I have to watch myself because I don't come from money.
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For a lot of folks who get sober, the process of getting and staying sober becomes their higher power, and it becomes a religion that sort of consumes a whole lot of them. I just don't think that that's necessary. I think that that can be a side note rather than the story of your life.
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I'm not a big AA guy, but I'll go every once in a while. They do tell you that going out and helping other people really helps you a lot. It seems like a simple thing to say, but it's really true.
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I think politics are a very personal thing.
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If I spend time at the front of the process worrying about connecting themes, then I won't write the best songs.
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It comes down to the difference between what you were planning to do and what life throws at you and you have to end up doing. The one who knows how to improvise is the one who comes out ahead.
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It occurred to me the thing that broke my heart the most was when I grew up and realized everything wasn't an adventure. I got to a certain age and realized I couldn't be Indiana Jones.
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I'd rather have 1000 of our fans than 10,000 Kid Rock fans!
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It's not easy to sit down and open yourself up and say, 'This is how much I love you,' you know? It's scary to do that.
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The world changes fast, and a lot of the old country folks have a hard time keeping up with it, and it makes them sad.
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I think I'm a common man for the most part, but I don't work as hard as most people that I know.
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The more you read, the better you are at writing, no matter what you're writing. A lot of songwriters miss that and don't see the connection there, and I've always felt like you're more able to communicate if you have a bigger toolbox to work with.
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Whatever needed to be done, I need to know how to do it just as well as my wife. You know, for us to be able to really balance the parenting. It was very humbling, and it was also, um - terrifying. Because, you know, giving a baby a bath for the first time is one of the scariest things you can do on this whole earth.
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I think sometimes I write to impress my influences. Whether they're actually acquaintances of mine, people that I think will hear the record or not, I still write - not to imitate my influences - but to write something that would live up to their standards.
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I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they're the guy who wrote that. You've got to be careful; if you don't want that to happen, don't write those songs.
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I have my own definitions of success. And I have my own definitions of country music that, luckily, I share with more people than I realized before.
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I don't remember a lot of the good times from my days with the Truckers.
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An incredible number of people have raised children who aren't too screwed up. Surely, I won't be the worst at it.
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When I hear somebody like Hayes Carll write a song that's touching and poignant and sad and funny all at the same time, it motivates me to step my game up and try to figure out a way to get more different emotions into one line or one song.
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If you're going to document your own journey, the jokes work better in the first person, just like the stories do.
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My wife and I both grew up with parents who were very young. Her mom was, I think, 17 or 18 when she was born; my mom was 15 when I was born. So, as we got older, we started thinking a lot about that - about the time that those people missed because we came along when we did and because they devoted so much of their lives to taking care of us.
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When I stopped drinking... there were so many things I had to face that I didn't even realize were part of my makeup before. When you do that and have any changes that severe, you lose a lot of things, both good and bad.
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If you're going to write, you're going to have to force yourself to really study the world.