Padgett Powell Quotes

Some travelers collect souvenirs, postcards, or bumper stickers; I bring home a pencil from the various places I visit.

Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music.

'Butterfly Mosque' came out of the emails I wrote to family and friends back home after moving to Egypt.

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.

My dad's family was from Tennessee. I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, where we lived at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As a kid, I was totally into Southern rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd. ZZ Top. It was so part of who I was.

I was one of the original drummers. What everyone likes to do is think of Lynyrd Skynyrd as the band that picked up again in '73. But I was one of the original members, and I was a big part of that.

Skynyrd's not just a band; I think it's a lifestyle. It's iconic.

Not every song of Lynyrd Skynyrd's was a single, but songs like 'Tuesday's Gone' and 'The Ballad of Curtis Loew' and 'Made in the Shade,' 'I Need You,' people learned those songs from the radio because radio played albums, not just singles.

You can be hip-hop to the max, but you still know 'Sweet Home Alabama.'

The South just keeps right on playing good time Southern music.

I don't really watch too many movies, but I try to watch inspirational pieces about other musicians. Musical documentaries truly inspire me.

We always pay tribute to what the old Lynyrd Skynyrd has done - I'm very proud of that.

We have to make a living, sure, but it's about the legacy of Lynyrd Skynyrd and what it stands for, what the fans are all about.

Yeah, Lynyrd Skynyrd, I knew all them guys.

Don't forget, Stephen Stills and I had a band in Gainesville called the Continentals when we were 15. And, of course, you had Lynyrd Skynyrd in Jacksonville.

Capricorn was one of the homes of the Southern rock movement with the Allman Brothers and Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band. I don't think you can come from that area and not be influenced by that stuff a little bit, no matter what generation you grew up in.

I would write about issues and people I met along the way, but not about the process and the life of being on the road.

A little bit South you've got Macon, Georgia - home of the Allman Brothers, the Marshall Tucker Band and Capricorn Records. And off to west you've got Delta blues. Sprinkle Southern gospel over the top of that, and you're talking about where I came from. I loved all of that music.

If you're a redneck, you have that blood flowing through your veins. That's almost on the bucket list, to hear "Freebird" live.

A lot of people like to think that polio was a inspiration in what I do. I think that music has to do with what kind of passion do you have.

Miley is always on, she’s always funny, she’s always writing songs, she’s always making music. The parallel of the film is like Miley says, going back to her home, going back to her roots. Getting back to Tennessee was art imitating life imitating art.

Everything in life influences my music.

When traveling, I usually keep a notebook: when home at my desk, the notebook serves mainly to remind me how little I saw at the time, or rather how I was noticing the wrong things. But the notes do spur memories, and it's the memories I trust. The wine stain on the page may tell me more than the words there, which usually strike me as hopelessly inadequate.

Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.

I'd like to do something that hits close to home.