Billy Pilgrim music is very emotional. It's one part the craft we learned from people like the Indigo Girls and R.E.M., and one part the Tom Waits craft, where you're trying to create a moment.
— Kristian Bush
I always tell people that it's so much harder to make a happy song than a sad one.
My voice has a lot of character and kind of doesn't sound like a lot of people's.
I love writing music for film and TV, but putting it into a video game is twice as fun because it needs to be repeatable and joyous.
It's hard not to go back and look at my songwriting catalog and go, 'Look, there are 600 to 700 songs here.'
I believe that melody is such a lost part of music and country music. People are either scared of it or not using all the colors that are available.
Sugarland was a band we started to try to make things better. It was in the aftermath of 9-11; it was in the aftermath of my mother dying... there was a lot of weird stuff that had gone on that made you want to start something good.
I'm not necessarily in a vocation where I'm at risk; it's not like I'm a police officer. I'm a musician, so when I leave home, my family expects me to come back.
With Sugarland, it never felt like we were finished telling our story.
I believe the biggest challenge is just getting the courage to try something different or new. Try to forget the stereotype in your mind. Yoga is for everyone - children, athletes, moms, dads, accountants, truck drivers, even country stars.
As soon as I saw tattoos as a way to tell your story, I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I totally get it.' So I got my first tattoo a couple of years ago, and it's the word 'hope' on my left arm. It has a couple of dots at the end for each of my kids.
I spent 25 years clearly understanding that I'm not gonna meet Bono or the Edge. But then it happened at the Grammys when we were all backstage and I just about fell out of my shoes.
I get intimidated by famous people. When I'm around them and they look at me like I belong, I'm like, 'Are you nuts? You're freakin' famous!' Whether it's Elmo or a Beatle or Vince Gill, it's humbling to be in a room with these folks.
There is a misconception that I've experienced in my life about people that live in the South. I got sent away to school in Connecticut in the late Eighties, and kids were honestly asking me, 'Do people there wear shoes?'
It's a great place to be as an artist: if you confuse your label, you're doing your job.
As a promoter, of course, you'd really want the people who pay for the tickets to come into your venue to really be even more connected with the band.
When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, 'indie' wasn't a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as 'indie bands,' and then it became a genre.
Music is supposed to make you less lonely - that's the whole idea.
It's a very sad thing to do, to divorce.
There's a social piece to what's going on in the Sugarland world, but we've never been a band that's political, and I maintain that.
I don't remember consciously not being able to play an instrument. It's been kind of like a language for me.
The first time I toured the U.K. was in the early '90s with Billy Pilgrim, so I know how much the people there love music.
I try to spend a lot of time thinking of what it is I want to say, and how I want to say it. Mainly because I know what it's like as a fan to hear music that is just exactly what I needed.
Each kind of generation of bands forgets how they got here. Waylon Jennings came out and they're like, 'That's not Patsy Cline.' And everyone panicked, like, 'I don't know what happened to country music, but this isn't it.'
My father was an officer in the Army, and my grandfather served in World War II, and I am so proud of their service. I'll always do whatever I can to support our troops.
I've always tried to put a little message in my music.
The most inspiring thing as an artist is when someone says, 'I believe in you'; sometimes that works even better than Grammys.
There's an identity thing that goes on where you spend so much time caring for your child that, after a year or so, you have to shake it off and go, 'Who am I?'
I love making music, but I also love making music that's on the radio. In some circles, that is considered less artistic. And I've always tried to resist those people that say the two can't exist at the same time.
You will do things in private and sing in private and make choices in private that you wouldn't make if you were observed.
You do things for your kids you won't do for yourself.
My kids don't listen to me when I preach at them. But if I tell them a story they can pull something from, that matters.
I have always heard that uber-successful people who write books about how to become uber-successful all have one thing in common: They all meditate every day. I consider yoga my meditation.
I've tried to start my kids on 'Doctor Who,' but they're just not there yet. Someone had given me these TARDIS stick-em notes, so I gave them to Tucker, and he finally put them all over his locker. I'm like, 'You're the coolest fifth grader, ever!'
I come from a food family, so you would think that I would be great at making baked beans or something, but I'm not.
You find your limits by going out and trying. We're just like anybody else in any other job. You just can't work 90 hour weeks. You can't do it. We can't sing seven days a week.
