Eric Close Quotes

'The Muppet Show' was huge. I watched it all the time as a kid, and I really loved the way they used music on that. I also remember hearing the radio in the car as a kid, like Stevie Wonder and Simon and Garfunkel.

After I started singing, I'd go to my dad's records I grew up with in his house listening to: Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, the Carpenters, Bob Seger, Neil Diamond, voices that resonate with you, that you know who they are right away.

I grew up listening to Dolly Parton and just loving her music.

I listened to Lil Wayne a lot when I was kid.

I love Willie Nelson's 'Phases And Stages'; there's so many songs from The Band and Bob Dylan that have gotten me through hard times, like 'Tears Of Rage.' I love Karen Dalton's 'In My Own Time' and Skip James.

But, I'm a big Johnny Cash and a big Lou Reed fan and a Fellini fan.

I listen to Emmylou Harris. She's my favorite. I don't know why, but I just feel more creative with her playing.

My dad was a huge Bob Dylan fan, so we listened to his music, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, and all that kind of stuff.

My dad listened to a lot of James Taylor when I was growing up. We had a couple of his cassettes in the car, and we'd go on a lot of long family car trips. It was either strange musicals or James Taylor - or Whitney Houston. It was quite the combination there.

I'm an old-school, embarrassing Joni Mitchell fan. Her music made a hook in my soul and hasn't let go for all these years. I even sing her songs as lullabies to my kids.

I always had a love of music, from the time I was a little kid, dressing up and singing along with Michael Jackson songs.

I listen to a lot of old music, like Joni Mitchell and David Bowie.

I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.

My dad is a huge folk music fan, so growing up, there were always records playing in my house. Carole King, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles - I grew up with this music, and I was aware of how special this music was to a lot of people.

As a kid I used to pretend I was John Denver, of all people, and play the guitar and sing Take Me Home, Country Roads.

There are some seminal things that happened in the '70s for me: Billy Joel and Jackson 5.

There are early videos of me at three years old with a tiny guitar trying to sing 'Friends in Low Places' by Garth Brooks.

In my early 20s, I was buying Kristofferson records. I loved his acting; then I found out all the songs he wrote. I loved the Highwaymen. I collected all that stuff.

When I was a kid I was definitely into Neil Young.

The music that I first fell in love with was American music, really. Nothing against British acts - I love them and will forever - but on the whole, it was the art of American storytelling in the kind of folk and blues lyrics that, if you scratch a little bit, there's a heartbreaking story there.

I grew up playing guitar in the late Nineties, early 2000s, so a very acoustic-driven pop-rock era, and then in college, I started listening to Jason Isbell and Kacey Musgraves. Then I really fell in love when I discovered really old country, like June Carter Cash - one of my all-time favorites.

I've been writing a lot more folky, country type stuff. One of the reasons I wanted to write in the first place was because of Darrell Scott.

I got into bluegrass music when I was 14, as a way to get into a band. My brother and I had a band and our own radio show, and that's what was popular.

I was always inundated with music, whether it be my mother's favorites like Fleetwood Mac and Carole King and the Carpenters, or my dad's jazz music.

My mom had a tape of Patsy Cline's greatest hits, and whenever we were in the car, she would put it on, and it got to the point where I knew all the words to every one of the songs, and I knew what order they came in on the tape.