Jason Isbell Quotes

One thing will lead to another and somebody will come up with a riff or a line or something we build from.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.

The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

We just wanted to write a bunch of songs that we thought were good songs.

There's always ideas buzzing around, but it's whether they actually end up materialising into a song.

I started writing songs, I guess, when I was about 13 or 14, but I didn't know if they were good enough yet or anything.

My songwriting, when I'm writing, is nothing like it is in its finished form - but you have to start somewhere.

I'm always working on new music.

I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song.

I never thought of myself as a songwriter. I was just an artist writing songs, and they just happened to get placed.

A lot of people start by learning other people's songs, but the idea of singing someone else's music didn't excite me. I just wanted to write my own. It was really bad to begin with. It's improved slightly since.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.

I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.

For me, making music is a continuous learning experience, and I think that it feeds itself.

I get very deep into the writing and recording process.

It's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is... songs comes through you.

To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.

I don't listen to a lot of music; I write more music than I listen to, for sure.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

It's a big plethora of music floating around in my head all the time, and I'll sit there and write a song.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.