It's a long road, so we are just trying to stay focused and grounded and keep moving forward. I'll take it, though.
Sturgill Simpson
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 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 lived in Japan when I was younger for about two years. I spent my time equally between religiously studying Aikido in Shinjuku by day and hard partying in Shibuya and Roppongi by night.
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 had a great job with the railroad, a good salary.
I'm very grateful, but at the same time, I'm glad all this happened when I'm 36 instead of 26 because I - I'm just such a homebody, and I just want to write songs and make the best record that I can.
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.
You can embrace nostalgia and history and tradition at the same time - it has to progress or it can't survive.
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.
I want all that dirt and grime and life-sauce. A lot of my favorite old soul records have it, but you don't hear it on country records anymore.
I could go back to the railroad. I liked that job.
It's hard enough to sit at a table and talk to most people as it is. But we can go to some town, and there's 300 people we've never met before, and by the third song, we're connecting with everyone in that room.
Kentucky isn't particularly religious.
I needed a writing space to get out of my house with the little guy. Because any time I try to write or sit down and do things, he wants to be there with me and play the guitar.
I think when you're dealing with any issues about trying to become a better human being, you have to look at a lot of things about yourself that maybe you don't want to or aren't able to.
Even with most finite planning, you never know what the final result will reveal itself to be until it's staring back at you.
Music Row gets dragged through the dirt, but they're just trying to survive.
Elvis was a way bigger influence than Waylon Jennings, but you don't wanna tell people, 'I never really listened to Waylon.'
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 just really want to make - to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.
I wanted to make an album that takes a journey through all my favorite periods in music and then culminates in something that will most likely end my career.
I love tape. It's another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.
The only way I'm going to support my family is to tour. I love playing, don't get me wrong. That 90 minutes every night, that's free. We get paid to travel. But every night, I have to get myself locked in. There are a thousand people that don't want to be disappointed, because they have a lot of expectations.
Both my grandfathers and my mother's brother were musicians.
The art is what can't be put on a timeline. You can't say, 'Well, I'm going to make a record in May because that's when the producer has a window.' So just recording and getting things out is paramount for me.
All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.
I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.
I knew I wanted to make a concept record in song-cycle form, like my favorite Marvin Gaye records where everything just continuously flows.
I'm grateful to all the non-risk-takers.
I'm just gonna write a record for my kid, and if people hate it, it doesn't matter.
I didn't graduate from college, so I might as well be on Atlantic Records, right?
I knew I loved playing bluegrass, so I'd end up down there on Sunday nights at the bluegrass jam.
I just have to do what it is going to make me happy, first and foremost - what is honest and what is sincere. Anybody that listens will hopefully connect with that.
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.'
Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley - guys like that were huge influences.
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.
You spend all this time reading or thinking or praying or searching or exploring.Maybe there's an Omega Point of love.
I tried to make a honky-tonk country record - rough-hewn, cut fast, and all analog - like I wasn't hearing anymore.
My wife thinks I'm crazy.
Back home, playing music is never anything you imagine you can do for a living. It's what you do after work.
Country music especially can get very formulaic - you know, you have to have your verses and a bridge and a chorus, and a lot of the songs are written as just plain and simple poetry on the road.
Anything that I'm naturally curious about, I get really into. Maybe it's O.C.D. I get really consumed by something until I absorb it, then I'm done with it.
I grew up listening to everything. I was in rock n' roll bands and punk bands, and I loved bluegrass and country music, too. Then, when I moved to Nashville, I put out a very traditional country record because that's just what you do. I had a bunch of very traditional country songs. Next thing you know, you're a country singer.
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.
I walked in, looked around, and the navy recruiter was a really hot brunette, so I signed up with her.
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.
You make a little noise, and you can sell out your local hometown club. But then you drive an hour down the road to the next town, and there might be eight people there.
I pretty much just hang out with the kid. I want, like three more, because that's all I ever want to do.
Saviours get crucified.
