Music Challenges Quotes

I was always very grateful to 'em and am grateful to 'em now. I went back a couple of years ago and did their 20th anniversary show. But the longer I stayed on Hee Haw, the worse things got for me musically.

It's very challenging to be a playback singer in Bollywood.

Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds.

It's tough going out as the opening act of a band especially when you're solo.

Everyone gets that second album syndrome.

I did MTV so long because it's been really hard to find a place that has been able to keep my interests where I can do more than one beat.

If I had been thrown out into a radio tour when I was 18, or 17, and given a record deal, I don't think... it would have been a total nightmare.

Being a musician in Texas had its own set of risks.

The songs were really complicated. I used to meet people in bar bands who were trying to play our songs and they were really struggling with it. Technically it was really difficult stuff.

I love my bandmates, and they're my friends, and even though we had fun and got to tour and I got to play the drums a lot, which I'll always appreciate, we had a really rough time. We toured and tried to get people to come to our shows and put out records, and we really struggled.

It is never easy for anyone to have success in music.

The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.

The second album is the hardest to write. It's nothing like the first album.

New York City is a notoriously hard market to perform country music in.

We all kind of dreamed about being musicians, but the narrative around being a musician is it'll never happen to you. It's not something that just happens - one in a million shot - all those things that just make you feel like it'll never happen.

Swimming upstream in the music business is a hard thing to do.

I used to break three or four strings a night, and the show would be over because I didn't know how to change the strings.

It must be really hard to be starting out in music now.