Rodney Crowell Quotes

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

It's true, there's a lot of melancholy in my music. I don't know why, I'm not a melancholy person. I've always been drawn to it. Ever since I was a kid, if I had an album I would play the ballads on repeat.

I'm one of those artists that doesn't actually hate my old hits. I love Boston music. I really like 'More than a Feeling.' After playing it to myself in a basement for such a long time, I'm happy to do it out on stage.

I listened to a lot of Bob Dylan songs to see how he works. I've gotten into writing story-songs.

I think we all love the music we listened to as kids the most.

My favorite Dylan song? I think it's 'Just Like a Woman.' It always makes me cry.

I'm also a big Bob Dylan fan. The songs on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - which is one of his best early albums - they grow out of some of his difficulties with Suze Rotolo, and "Hard Rain," people say it had to do with the Cuban missile crisis - probably not. He denied it. I believe him, but it certainly had to do with the time.

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.

One of the great things about music is that it has the capability of time travel - you smell a certain smell in the room and it takes you back to your childhood. I feel like music is able to do that, and it happens to me all the time.

I really enjoy playing America. I like the audiences there. It's the home of a lot of music I grew up with.

I'd asked for things like the 'Footloose' soundtrack and Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' for my birthdays, but I remember walking what felt like miles to this cassette shop called The Warehouse to buy Paul Simon's 'Graceland,' U2's 'Joshua Tree' and a Roberta Flack album. I had pretty good taste.

When I was a kid, we had acoustic guitars, a piano in the house. I made a drum kit out of buckets in my garage.

My first albums as a little kid were Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,' Simon and Garfunkel's 'Greatest Hits' - and 'Workingman's Dead.' How many other people still listen to the music they liked at age 12?

New Orleans will always be in my heart. New Orleans raised me - it's in my blood.

Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Neil Young and Bob Dylan are my main influences.

Dylan captured what was on a million minds and turned it into poetry. With 'Blowin' in the Wind' or 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' he set a whole new standard.

I love Paul Simon... his lyrics.

When I go back to seek inspiration - whether it be from Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, the Beatles, Hank Williams, Ray Charles or Bob Dylan - it's from the performance. Those artists are in the studio playing their instrument and singing. There's no going back and redoing the vocals.

I think the first song I remember hearing was Joni Michell's 'Big Yellow Taxi,' my mom played it for me on the car radio.

For me, my favorite Mariah Carey songs were never the singles, ever. My favorite Mariah song of all time is 'Sent From Up Above' from her first album, or 'Vanishing,' songs no one talks about.

There was an old acoustic in the house that my mother had given me for my fifth birthday. I took it off the wall and started jamming. I was seven years old at the time.

Most people think that I heard Bob Dylan first and got a cap and harmonica. Really, it was Woody Guthrie. He was so influential.

When I was a kid I was always listening and singing along to Disney compilation CDs.

When I discovered Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I could explore the records that inspired me on a different level and that led me to Joni Mitchell, who is maybe my favorite of all time, and Warren Zevon. Those artists that wrote the lyrics that you try for.

Anyone who grew up with me knows that Queen is my favorite band of all time.