It comes down to the difference between what you were planning to do and what life throws at you and you have to end up doing. The one who knows how to improvise is the one who comes out ahead.

People love to be listened to and represented, and they love it when they feel like you have some of the same problems that they do. Everybody deals with things like romantic difficulties in relationships and death and cancer and abuse.

I don't have certain kinds of fatigue. My focus stays strong - I can work on a song for six or seven hours in one day and not get bored or tired of it.

I'm not trying to steer people in a direction. I'm just trying to move them. Wherever it takes them, it doesn't matter to me. I just want them to be moved in one way or another, and that's a hard thing to do, I think.

I think the live show is a different kind of catharsis. It's an event. It's supposed to be entertaining. To keep myself entertained, I like to play a rock n' roll show. I still kind of feel like I'm a rock n' roll musician anyway.

I think great songs appeal to people at any age. Kids love the Beatles, too. Kids love Tom T. Hall. Of course, Tom T. wrote some things that were specifically for kids. But I think kids recognize quality more than they get credit for sometimes.

I think politics are a very personal thing.

If I could write rock & roll songs on purpose, I'd do it all the time. But most of what I write comes out slow and sad because that's most of what I listen to.

I'll take a certain concern of my own or a situation and try to frame it around a fictional story, but sometimes just straight-up autobiographical songs work well, and sometimes a story is better. I like stories. I like to hear them. I don't think there are enough of them in songs anymore.

I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they're the guy who wrote that. You've got to be careful; if you don't want that to happen, don't write those songs.

My favorite thing about going to concerts has always been looking around and thinking that there's a lot of people in here that are very much like me, a lot of people in here I could have a full conversation with.

I went to school for creative writing in college, and I wound up about six hours short of my degree.

When I was still drinking, I thought I was kind of in control of everything in my life and other people's lives and realized at some point that that just wasn't the case at all.

I think a lot of people are scared, and I know I was scared to get sober, at least using this as an excuse; 'I don't want to be one of those sober people.' And I don't think you have to be. I think you can be one of those people who happens to be sober.

I think sometimes I write to impress my influences. Whether they're actually acquaintances of mine, people that I think will hear the record or not, I still write - not to imitate my influences - but to write something that would live up to their standards.

I don't think I'd be happy if I were satisfied. I enjoy challenge, and I wouldn't say that I'm an ambitious person career-wise or financially, really. I would like to travel more comfortably, but that's really about all I need.

As far as being satisfied, I just don't think you should work towards being satisfied. If everybody were satisfied, we'd never get anything done.

If you're somebody who writes songs or writes fiction, a writer that people pay for your opinion in any way, you shouldn't be the least bit uncomfortable giving it to them. People want songwriters to tell them how they think and how they feel. That's what a song is. That's what I want to hear in a song.

I write pretty much year-round, but I definitely do more when a deadline is looming.

There are so few people that wake up every day and go do something that they don't dread... I'm very lucky.

I'd rather have 1000 of our fans than 10,000 Kid Rock fans!

The south is very focused on family... the musical heritage of Muscle Shoals especially and the bands from the region.

I've always wanted to pull off 'No One is to Blame' by Howard Jones. I've done that a couple times in solo shows, but I can't figure out how to do that with a full band and make it work.

An incredible number of people have raised children who aren't too screwed up. Surely, I won't be the worst at it.

Sometimes a song becomes rhetoric, but you have to really empathise. You also have to leave room for both sides of the argument: even if you're not telling the other side, you have to put that part in parentheses and make sure it's understood.

I spend a lot of time wondering how to best support the people that I love, because I think sometimes that means getting out of the way. When should I leave them alone to have their own life?

I've dealt with a lot of physical pain, with a lot of emotional pain; anybody's who's ever been an alcoholic has handled both of those in extreme.

I don't believe all music is good. I believe some music is bad for people to listen to. I think it makes their taste worse, I think it makes their lives worse, I think it makes them worse people.

I go to the movies a lot on off days. I exercise. I have routines that I go by.

The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.

Good sounds, they just make you feel good.

I don't remember a lot of the good times from my days with the Truckers.

My dad, as much as I love him, has one of those signs - 'The Isbell's' - on his front door, and he's got the damn apostrophe in there. I haven't strangled him yet.

I think Spotify is honestly just another one of Sean Parker's ways of ripping musicians off.

My dad, he worries a bit, usually with good reason. There were quite a few years there where he was probably trying to resign himself to fact that I wouldn't live too much longer, just because of the way I was living.

When I was writing 'Southeastern,' I'd just recently gotten sober. For me, that was a major turning point in my life. It changed things I did on a day-to-day basis. My whole routine was upended. It took me some time to get used to that and figure out how do I keep myself entertained.

I think for anything to be successful, your problems have to become different problems over time.

I need enough room to eventually throw a baseball with a child; that's all the yard I need. That's all I want.

A lot of the world turns into checklists for me when I'm on the road. Like, OK, this person's alive, this person's fed, this person's good. Soundcheck is done. Everything becomes a checklist except for the actual show.

I like not having to worry about paying the bills, but I have to watch myself because I don't come from money.

Sometimes I leave an encounter or a conversation hoping that I didn't come off as above my raisin' - hoping that I didn't make somebody feel bad for not having as much as we're fortunate to have.

I'm not looking to be a superstar. I just want to be in a room with good people who are similar to me and are at least open to things that I have to say.

Terrible things happen all of the time, and they can happen in a second. The best thing is to be prepared to react. If you try to control every little thing, you're going to end up miserable - and you're going to fail.

It occurred to me the thing that broke my heart the most was when I grew up and realized everything wasn't an adventure. I got to a certain age and realized I couldn't be Indiana Jones.

I like to play pool. When the ball goes in the pocket, you win.

I'm not a big AA guy, but I'll go every once in a while. They do tell you that going out and helping other people really helps you a lot. It seems like a simple thing to say, but it's really true.

If you're going to write, you're going to have to force yourself to really study the world.

No matter what you thought your plans were, that's not how things are going to work out, and that's the only way you can really, I think, live successfully.

My wife and I both grew up with parents who were very young. Her mom was, I think, 17 or 18 when she was born; my mom was 15 when I was born. So, as we got older, we started thinking a lot about that - about the time that those people missed because we came along when we did and because they devoted so much of their lives to taking care of us.

Most of the people that I spend my time around are people who listen to a whole lot of different kinds of music.