I like that old style of country music - it seems to me that a lot of the modern country music is rehashed rock n' roll.
Two of my favorite bands, Blackberry Smoke and Black Stone Cherry, I just think both of those bands are a good new progressive kind of Southern Rock that's a little different than us but still has a rootsy thing going on.
I think I'm the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.
I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane.
The country experience was more of a departure. When you consider my education and my upbringing, you can see that was more of country rock outgrowth of my popular music aspirations.
I rejected most of the folk I was exposed to in the Seventies. I came around later to Tom Waits, some parts of Jim Croce, and a lot of Cat Stevens.
I think country music is Lynyrd Skynyrd. I think a lot of the country music is what we do, but I don't think rock & roll is dead at all.
If you look at just right, there's not a nickel's worth of difference between what Buck Owens and the Buckaroos played on 'Buckaroo' and what the Ventures were playing. It's all that twangy instrumental stuff.
James Burton was playing some pure roots stuff. Gram Parsons took an interest in that record [in '68-'69] and he admired it. I never had the concept that I'm going to go somewhere and I'm going to have this career. I just really never thought about all that.
Going back to the Byrds and 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo,' when country was kind of getting away from the fiddle and steel aspect, it took some rock & rollers to introduce a new generation to it, and it kinda put some things straight.
A lot of the songs are very rock-oriented. My voice makes them country, and a lot of people think that is a strange combination... I think it creates something different and unique.
The other guys in Hootie were into rock. I brought the country influence.
Blackberry Smoke is my favorite band!
I like hearing fiddles, steel guitar, acoustics up loud - really rock & roll stuff but with a country sound behind it. That's just who I am. I'm not trying to prove a point; I am just doing what I like. But I don't have any problems with any other artist coming in and doing their own thing.
I love 'Crazy Horse,' and Neil Young is one of my favorite guitar players.
I'd love to cover an 'Incubus' song. I don't think anybody in a cowboy hat on a country stage has ever done that, and I'd love to be the first.
I loved playing the stuff we did in the Byrds. It was a good band. I was lucky to be in it.
I think pure country music includes rock and roll .. I've never been able to get into the further label of country-rock .. how can you define something like that ? - I just say this: It's music. Either it's good or it's bad; either you like it or you don't
It's the hillbilly rock, beat it with a drum. Playin' them guitars like shootin from a gun. Keepin' up the rhythm, steady as a clock. Doin' a little thing called the hillbilly rock.
I love country and rock, and I wanted to fuse them together. But I also knew that there were certain elements that needed to still be there to be both country and cater to my old fans.
In the late '70s, I was falling into the middle lane. I was way too country to be rock, and way too rock to be a country act.
There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.
I figure the oldies are real close to what rocking country use to be.
When I read about Gram Parsons' dream of this Cosmic American Music when I was in my late teens, that stuck with me: that idea, that ambition, to draw off the roots of music but take it somewhere fresh.
I'm always looking for overlooked post-Dylan singer-songwriter records from the '70s.
