If you go in RCA A, you'll realize that it's not just a Nashville thing. It's a studio that belongs to music.
— Chris Stapleton
Anybody who has ever played in bars has played 'Keep Your Hands to Yourself.' It's a monumental piece of rock & roll. It makes you feel exactly like rock & roll is supposed to make you feel.
I like all kinds of music. But I would rather people stop caring about lines.
The curse of being a songwriter is that's you're always at work. I could look out the window right now and see something that would make me want to write.
I love music so much, and I love musicians - I love singers. It's fun. That's what music's supposed to be. Fun.
I've always believed you should sing songs you can really put yourself into. I think the emotion you put into it is just as important as singing the notes.
If I have a talent, it lies in the creative process.
Everybody gets through a phase where it's, 'Ah, if I could just sound just like Vince Gill.' Then you figure out that you have your own voice, whether you like it or not, and that's what you should stick with.
I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I'm not Chuck Berry or Bill Monroe. Guys like that are from outer space.
I don't make records to win awards. I make records to make records and hopefully make the records as good as they can be.
I'm a fan of records. I'm a fan of listening to something cover to cover and not wanting to skip over anything.
I think, at some point, all of us - I'm gonna speak personally, not for everybody else - you're gonna feel like a one-trick pony, and you might even be a one-trick pony. But at some point, if it's a really good trick, everybody's still gonna appreciate it.
I'm only worried about what I'm doing or how I present music. I just try to do things I want to listen to, and I think that's what everybody else is try doing, too.
It's man's work. My dad was gone at 4:30 in the morning and home at 8 at night, and he worked underground, and the last mine he worked in was 26 inches high in a lot of places. He liked the engineering of it - he liked the moving the earth and being able to extract something and put it back for reclamation. He enjoyed the whole process.
I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.
If you think about what everyone else will think, you forget to just make music.
I always like to write the songs, and they get turned loose into the world, and who knows what happens to them. That's the joy of being a songwriter. You get to hear what other people do, interpretation-wise.
Anyone who says it's so easy to write a country hit and that it's just a formula - well, try it sometime. If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it.
I'm gonna keep making music that hopefully I think is good, and whatever comes out of that, that will be fine with me.
I don't think country music needs saving from anything.
America's military allow the rest of us to do what we do.
College didn't stick, so I worked odd jobs, but I've always written songs and played music. I actually met a guy who was a songwriter, which I didn't realize was a real job.
For me, the more time you can take and the more care you can take with songs, the better off you're going to be.
The first time you listen to someone else's interpretation of what you've created, it's a little unnerving. They'll change lyrics or something almost every time. That's them being an artist, and you appreciate it more over time.
I don't know that my voice ever makes sense anywhere, necessarily. I would sing bluegrass music, and I don't fit in there; I would sing rock music, and I'm probably a little too hillbilly for that. And country, I'm too much rock n' roll for there sometimes.
I like more of the club mentality, where we're playing, and if we feel like we want to play a cover, we'll switch to that.
There are great songs out there, and if I love them, and I know them, I'm going to sing them just because that's what songs are for.
It's nice to see people invest in what you do as an artist and sing the songs back at you and feel something. You get to feel something more than what you were feeling when you made the record.
I want the dude in the top row to feel like he's down there on the front row in a club.
I don't see myself as some kind of fightin'-the-good-fight guy. But I always feel like if you don't like one kind of music or the other, it's just not for you.
I was writing waltzes at a time when the most popular thing was Shania Twain and the very pop edge of country. I didn't really know how to do much of that.
I can pass myself off as a 'Duck Dynasty' impersonator a lot.
I didn't have any expectations with 'Traveller' - I don't think anybody did. That's how I prefer the process to be.
I didn't know they would pay you money to sit in a room and write songs for other people. I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found that out, that that could be a job, I thought, 'That's the job for me. I gotta figure out how to do that.'
I grew up less than a mile from folks that lived in shacks with dirt floors. I certainly know that there are needs in this country. Not too far from your house, if you look around, people need to be helped.
I think it's OK if somebody likes my music and likes Sam Hunt's music, too. And I think if we're both selling records, it's good for everybody. I think it allows other records to get made.
Whether you like modern incarnations of what country radio hits are, or you like what I'm doing, or you like something really off in folk, poetry Americana land, it's all just music, man. If you like one of them, great - go buy it.
My dad could hold a tune. He wasn't necessarily a singer, but he did love music, and he listened to it quite loud in the car.
I don't ever view myself as a straight country act, and I don't think the straight country acts view me as a straight country act, either - but I certainly belong to them.
Everybody's got a story on their beards. I guess it's just a way of finding common ground with people you otherwise might not know.
I had a beard way before it was fashionable.
I don't look at it as mainstream country versus outsider.
I'm not going to ask musicians to sit there and pretend to play. It feels insulting to the musicians to me.
My earliest memories of music are probably my dad listening to a bunch of outlaw country, but also old R&B and Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin. But, you know, I had rock phases and liked more modern R&B acts. I've always listened to all kinds of music, and I like all kinds of music.
It's a unique thing, and it's probably the thing I love most about songs and music - their ability to connect in a human way.
I like places that have history in the sense of - you feel responsible to it.
Everybody likes to listen to a song because it's fun, and nobody wants to sit around and listen to 'I-really-have-to-analyze-these-lyrics' songs all the time.
I'm always just looking to get back to the joy of playing music, and keeping it simple, as much as I can.
I used to spend my money on going to Tom Petty concerts.
I always feel that if you're going to cover a song, you should make it your own and flip it on its head.
