Rehab is like a divorce.

When I hear somebody like Hayes Carll write a song that's touching and poignant and sad and funny all at the same time, it motivates me to step my game up and try to figure out a way to get more different emotions into one line or one song.

You don't have any kind of control ultimately. Things are just going to happen as they will. And I think your best option sometimes is just to react rather than try to plan everything out in advance.

A great story poorly told doesn't do anybody any good at all, and nobody wants to hear it, and nobody wants to read it. The craft of it is really more important than the subject matter.

Every time I'd get a job, they'd say: 'You'll be good at loading trucks.' I couldn't explain that there was more to me than carrying things.

I think I'm a common man for the most part, but I don't work as hard as most people that I know.

It's nice to feel like you have more in common with people rather than more differences.

If I spent my time wondering about what genre I wanted to be in or where I was on the charts, I wouldn't be able to write these kinds of song. I'd be too busy doing other things.

My wife is so very important to me that it's made my mom more important to me. It's made every woman I know more important to me.

I didn't know what to expect when we first started touring behind 'Southeastern' because you don't want to lull anybody to sleep or lose their attention. But it's really been incredible how the crowds seem to be just as excited for the slow, sad songs as they are for the old rockers.

There are definitely some nights where the show is over, and you're on the bus or a hotel room, and it's sort of a shock to go from being in the atmosphere of a club or a theater and be at your own show to being by yourself in a hotel room.

You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.

At the end of the day, I'm just trying to write a song that I like, that I'm not afraid to turn loose on the world. I do read a lot. I know a lot of people who read more, but I do try to keep a book in my hand most of the time, and I think that informs any kind of output that I'm going to have.

I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.

Physical labor, manual labor - if you can stay close to those folks, there's always plenty to write about, 'cause their issues are real issues.

A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest or the one that sells the most copies. They're editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I'm trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest.

When somebody asks me what a song or a line is about, I feel like I'm not done writing it yet.

If I spend time at the front of the process worrying about connecting themes, then I won't write the best songs.

You always have a lot of time on the road, and you have to fill that time up with something.

For a lot of folks who get sober, the process of getting and staying sober becomes their higher power, and it becomes a religion that sort of consumes a whole lot of them. I just don't think that that's necessary. I think that that can be a side note rather than the story of your life.

I know it's financially lucrative to go out on my own, but I don't like it. It's really hard work, just the performance aspect. I like people who look like they've been together for too long and sound like they've been together too long. I like rock n' roll bands.

I find the ones that have the most emotional weight, the heaviest songs. For some reason, for me, they're usually the ones I write the quickest. I put more work into uplifting material, I think, sometimes.

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.