Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

Laurie Lewis' songs combine passion and sheer craft in a way you don't hear very often. Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it.

To me, ballads are special, because you can have a pop song that’ll be know for three weeks and then you’ll hear nothing else about it. Nobody else will record it and it’ll just be gone. But if you do a good ballad, it’ll be in the world forever.

What I like is not a particular genre, it's storytelling. There's a lot of great storytelling in jazz, and in folk and in country music.

Denice Franke is a sensitive and compelling singer and songwriter.

The classic, quote/unquote, craft of songwriting still works; it still is relevant.

I'm a folk singer-songwriter. I am pretty poppy though.

A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it you don't have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.

Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.

When people say the words 'singer-songwriter,' I think they have an image in their heads of someone with an acoustic guitar who is a bit woe-is-me. I'd like to think that I'm not one of those. I'm quite a happy person.

I love Punjabi Folk.

For a ballad's a thing you expect to find lies in.

At the beginning of my career, I saw an opportunity to forge new ground and focus on songwriting. Not many people were doing that at the time. Pretty much nobody. I thought I could write some really cool songs that would rise above all these dozens of genres that exist within dance music. I'd make it more about the songs. For the last 20 years, I've been sharing stories of my life through music. I've been writing songs about my life.

Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.

I'm a really huge John Prine fan; I love his clever conversationalist songs.

Jesse James is like a Leonard Cohen song, I wanted to do something that was like a pop song.

My father writings stuff was always his personal stuff, like about the day we had to put our dog down, or finding old photographs of his father, or passing a guy he went to boarding school with on a street in New York. Very specific, detailed, descriptive columns that he wrote. I think in a way, it could be argued that my best songs are that way too. They're almost journalistic in that they're very clear, and very specific, and they describe things.

I think to me, all songs are stories.

I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.

I'm pretty excited for people to listen to the story of each song. It's definitely like a giant book with different stories in it. They are all very child-like but also a balance between light and dark.

I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.

When I was about 13 or 14. I was in a Kingston Trio type group. We evolved into the New Breed. Our first song on the radio was "Green Eyed Woman," not to be confused with "Green Eyed Lady".

History has proven that it's impossible to crush the artist. There's always gonna be a need for somebody to write a poem or sing a song about something, about life - that makes it real. There's the word that goes beyond the word.

Soap opera rappers, all these niggas sound like 'All My Children'.

This is real, this is your life in a song...this is country music.