Record Quotes

I've been wanting to sing for a long time. I've been singing all my life, and I've tried different record companies, but it seemed like - it was such a struggle and so hard to get out there. So, I said, 'I'm gonna go on American Idol and see how far it takes me.'

I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right.

It's not like it used to be where everybody has a record company to belong to.

When we were making vinyl records we had a lot of time limitations for each record so songs were left off for a number of reasons. Now, with CDs, much more music can be included.

As soon as you start making a record, things start getting lined up: the promotion, possibly even a tour.

I'm delighted to be Number 1, but next week I don't want people to buy my record, I want them to buy Band Aid.

If I had had a chance to tour with Van Halen before the record, I think it would have been a different record.

I should be the one to say what I do. It's just not done that way anymore in Nashville, and I can't do it the other way. That's how our record label came about.

We recorded that trio and it's out on the Knitting Factory label. I've got another record in the can with that group and Marc, which I'll hopefully finish some time before next summer.

Having a track record to live up to and the history of successes had become a hindrance. It becomes harder to break out of what people expect you to do.

That's the strange thing about making a record. You can be in one mood for an hour, put it on a record, and you're remembered that way.

There's a rumor that there may be an attempt at organizing a possible script for a series on my life, which, when you look at my police record, you'd have to have more than one hour to tell the story.

I wanted to make a jazz record. I didn't want it to be a standards record.

I had no allusions of radio success. I just loved being in studios. I was having fun and in that sense I now feel a lot like I did when I did that record.

I love the classic crooners, but I got that from my mother - she worked in a record store.

I was always looking to record, but how much I actually pursued it was another thing. The major labels weren't that interested in me, and the smaller labels didn't have any money to do anything.

I'm not going to do the Ben Harper house record or the Ben Harper drum 'n' bass record.

I want to live my life, not record it.

I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning.

The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.

Interested listeners have only to hear the recording to find out if those guys, who go to such pains to undervalue my work, are right. All people have to do is listen to realize it is a beautiful record.

I think the record speaks for itself. These are two individuals who have been for the war when the headlines were good and against it when their poll ratings were bad.

Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes.

Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.

When you are making a record and if you spend too much time over it, you have to record it a tone lower or cut the tones lower because you can't reach some of the notes, I find this. But when you go on stage, you have to put the key up and it really changes the whole thing.

Every record that I've ever made, I listen to it so much before it comes out. As soon as it comes out, I never listen to it again. It's, like, over.

I think some people record songs and make records a certain way to cater to radio. If you're born to make commercial music that's cool. But if you're born to not make commercial records, maybe you're meant to cater to another market.

I remember that in '81, country radio was pretty pop, and everybody wanted a crossover record - and all of a sudden it came back to traditional. Now it's kind of swung the other way a little bit, but it always comes back.

I have this desire to just while away weeks, months and years. It took me two years to make this record but that was with me trying to condense my process and not disappear down the rabbit hole with all the cool things I've collected. I could take 10 years and not explore everything I want to with these instruments.

My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.