Shamir Quotes

I love being a part of country music. I love going out and... doing things for the first time for country music. I always enjoy that.

When I came across something I liked, I wanted to find out as much as I could about it. This was as true of hearing Hoagy Carmichael for the first time as it was later when I first heard Boulez.

The more I got into playing guitar, the more I enjoyed music, and the broader my listening became. The instrument itself became important to me, and I started messing around with classical guitar and took classical lessons.

It was the early days of Rock 'n' Roll in this country. We were all struggling to learn music, it might be Country, Jazz, Classical, Blues or even Rock 'n' Roll.

Music was something I found on my own. I got my first guitar when I was around 10, and it just all developed over time.

The first time I learned how to play, my guitar was out of tune. I didn't know it; I just started writing songs.

I began playing drums when I was seven and guitar when I was fourteen, but it wasn't until the early '90s that I took music seriously.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

As long as you continue to have new songs, there's usually some new topic or something to present.

I was into all kinds of music as a teen - country music, because my dad was in a band that played country, and whatever my sister and brother were into.

From the beginning, I've always had a knack for catchy melodies. But I went through a period when I was trying to be rock n' roll and have a rock n' roll attitude. I was fighting my nature by trying to play really hard and sing really hard. But at a certain point, I realized that I loved syrupy pop music with tons of harmony.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

I got into music when I was a little boy. My dad was always into jazz. I got my education from him. The first time I listened to jazz, he gave me a Thelonious Monk record. It was so different from anything I had ever heard. It took me a while to understand it, and I liked that. I liked the fact that it wasn't immediately palatable.

I feel like you listen your whole life, so when you are in the studio, your references are all the songs and music that you know. It just depends on where the songs are going and what attracts you at the moment.

I like writing all different kinds of songs. I've wanted to run the gamut of artists.

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

I grew up with a wide range of music.

I’m a self-confessed raw country boy and guitar-playing fool.

I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I'd always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13.

I've written my own music, and I play guitar.

Country music's always had the best musicians in any format of music, and I always gravitated toward that, stuff that was musically interesting.

My guitar, it was new when I got it, but it has a hole like Willie's where it's just worn out from my pinky going back and forth over the wood over all these years. I got Willie Nelson to sign that spot on my guitar. I'm a huge fan of him.

I listened to a battery radio, old country and pop stuff. Because I was singing all the time, my dad bought me a $7.50 guitar.

I always tell people, the first time I heard 'She Talks To Angels,' those lyrics did something to me.