Justin Townes Earle Quotes

A lot of my music is very roots-oriented, and that's country and soul. I've been in every roadhouse in the South, soaking in all of that... Nashville is like a second home to me, and I'm just gravitating toward the songs.

When I do listen to music, I'm more prone to listen to the people I've always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

Country music belongs to America.

Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.

Country music has always been about as close to R&B as you can possibly get. We're storytellers.

I never get tired of exploring Americana or country music, and I always have a little bit of a crooner in me that never seems to go away.

To me, country music tells a story about, and deals with, the way people live their lives and what they do.

The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.

The word matters in country music, and it always has. And everybody had lived those words in country songs.

Country music is me, it's what I've grown up with, and it's what I do.

I got country music in me.

My favorite songs to sing have always been songs about regret. I don't know why that is, but to me, that's country music.

I've been a fan of old country music, like Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline. I think I'm drawn to it because of the sense of sadness and sort of loss that a lot of good old country music has.

When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar.

I was introduced to country music around a campfire on a farm.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

That's country music for you - bourbon and the Bible.

I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.

To me, country music is like the blues, but it's something very hip and - I don't want to say commercial - but it's very worldly and good listening.

I listen to a lot of really old western and country music. There's a lot of cool stuff in there... all the heartbreak of the country darkness.

Country music historically has been sort of middle-aged people's music.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

A good country song takes a page out of somebody's life and puts it to music.

Only in country music can you compare an old pickup truck and an old guitar to your wife and turn it into a love song... Thank God for country music.

The history of country music is as important as any other art form.