Purgatory is hell, with hope.Collection: Hope
The more it looks like home, the more I feel like people are understanding my accent.Collection: Home
The problem with country is we've turned the props into the play. Let's not just Solo cup and pickup truck it to death. Let's handle this in a smart way. Nobody is thinking about lyrical content, or how we're moving people, or what's going on in the background of their minds.
I hope that I'm doing my people justice and I hope that maybe someone from somewhere else can get a glimpse of the life of a Kentucky boy.
Maybe I can bring my own perspective and connect with people from my home area by giving them my two cents of a different angle.
Storytelling in Appalachian culture - it runs deep. You have these communities and families that, for a long time, were isolated, and if you did have time off after working to keep everything going, you'd sit around and just yak, just talk and tell tall tales and flat-out lies and try to one-up the guy who just told a story.
A writer can write an essay, but the writer can never control how that essay is interpreted by the reader.
Where I grew up, I feel lucky to have been from there. The culture in general is rooted with a strong sense of family; of kin; of place, geographically; of tradition. There's a resilience, a strong will to make it. I mean, heck, it was settled by a bunch of outcasts that didn't fit in.
In the midst of our own daily struggles, it's often hard to share an understanding for what another person might be going through.
The first thing that comes to your head is probably the only thing you should say. If you have to sit down and spend ten minutes trying to have something genuine, it may not be all that genuine.
I've grown up in church and Gospel music was a big thing - and Bluegrass - but I just think of that music my buddies and I listened to growing up in the hills, it was as meshed together as what people now call Americana.
What I consider country music doesn't make it the end all be all, but if you ask me my opinion, that's what you're going to get.
A lot of times, you'll be flipping through country radio and there's just no substance. Like I've said before, it's all about props: Solo cups or whatever. It's not about a dude's work day or someone that lost a good friend or relative. There's nothing to hold onto when you're going through something.
I don't sit down and say, 'Today I will write a song.' I know a lot of people that do that, but if I'm not in the mood, what's the point of beating my head against the wall?
I'm chasing a feeling more than a sound and I try to reflect that in my turns of phrases. Growing up in church, people would get up and sing, and the conviction reflected in their vocals; I try to carry that in my sound.
We just played whatever we could get ahold of. If we were at a party and we had a banjo, a mandolin and guitar or 10 guitars, that's what we played that night.
I think that's why Sturgill and I worked so well together. We came from similar backgrounds as far as a sense of place. We were surrounded by the same culture. We listened to a lot of the same music growing up.
Although you'll seldom hear him do it, my dad sings really well. When I was a kid, we'd go hunting, and the old pickup truck had a radio in it. I have a lot of memories of coming home late at night and hearing my dad break out in song.
We can stop being so taken aback by Black Lives Matter. If we didn't need to be reminded, there would be justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me, and countless others.
We can start looking for ways to preserve our heritage outside lazily defending a flag with history steeped in racism and treason.
When I was younger, I had two of mine own cassette tapes that I burnt up, like constantly I was always listening to. They were two Ricky Skaggs albums.
I was pretty partial to Kerouac and I also liked Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Gothic writing and local writers, like Jesse Stewart. They became an inspiration for how I wanted my writing voice to be.
I was always writing on something: short stories and journal entries of what had happened that day, always thinking about something to write down.
I've been listening to Stapleton for a long time. He's a hometown guy. I remember when I first heard word of him down there: songwriting and hearing those demos that were used for his publishing house and when he started Steeldrivers.
Long Violent History' is a collection of instrumental pieces intended to create a sonic soundscape for the listener to set the tone to reflect on the last track, which is my own observational piece on the times we are in.
We've all witnessed violent acts of police brutality happen around the nation that have gone unaddressed.
My first song was a hardcore knock-off of 'Tangled Up in Blue.' It was based on a story maybe I had heard before. I was 13. The woman died in the end - she was sleeping on the railroad tracks. Pretty edgy, ya know.
I've been writing a lot of road songs. Writing a lot of homesick songs. But once you start playing them out, it all ain't no secret anymore. Everyone knows how you feel.
When I was a little kid, it blew my mind and kind of broke my heart when I found out that the 'Dukes of Hazzard' weren't actually from Hazard, Kentucky.
In my opinion, with political and religious views, how can you 110 percent, full-hearted say without a shadow of a doubt say that this is how I feel, and this is where I want to be in my life, if you haven't looked at it any other way than just one angle?
Born Again' is a love song. It's just these two people - two forms of energy - meeting and losing each other and finding each other again and coming together and being the same thing.
I remember there were two tapes that my papa had in his truck at all times when I was younger. It was a Ralph Stanley gospel cassette and the 'Hee Haw' gospel album.
A lot of commercial country does speak to people in some way. It's more of a ear worm or a melody that's really catchy. That's something that you certainly want, but it's only one piece of the criteria for a good song.
I grew up on 23, country music highway, which is a stretch of road where Ricky Skaggs and Dwight Yoakam and Loretta Lynn played. Driving up and down that on the way to school - to baseball games, to anywhere - you see all these signs commemorating these artists. It was a point of pride for my area growing up.