A Quote by Cheyenne Jackson
Initially, in starting to pick the songs for the live show, it was really a matter of picking songs that I loved over the years. As far as the album goes, it happened very naturally.
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This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.
When I think about putting together an album, the process of listening to hundreds of songs each time and picking out the best 10 or so that will go on the record, it really sinks in as to just how many songs I've listened to all these years.
You sing songs hundreds of times over and over, but certain ones just morph and naturally, as you age and get life experience, take on a different form as well. When I was looking at songs for the album, I thought, "Which are the ones that connect with me the most? What do I think would work in album form?" Almost all of them I've done in shows.
I need all kinds of songs - fast ones, slow ones, minor key, ballads, rumbas - and they all get juggled around during a live show. I've been trying for years to come up with songs that have the feeling of a Shakespearean drama, so I'm always starting with that.
Even writing verses from my first album, there were songs that I didn't use because I just felt that they weren't really for me. But I think that happens naturally when you write songs. You're in a different mood in every session. There's so many songs out there that could potentially be used by other artists.
For me, the good songs are the ones that come really naturally. There are certain songs that you rework and rewrite and the craft becomes very evident, but a lot of times those aren't my favorite songs. The favorite songs are the ones that I can't even hear my own voice in.
That's what is so great about being able to record a 13-song album. You can do a very eclectic group of songs. You do have some almost pop songs in there, but you do have your traditional country, story songs. You have your ballads, your happy songs, your sad songs, your love songs, and your feisty songs.
I like albums where all the songs are written in one go. If you're trying to create the number-one album with the best songs ever, I get why you'd want to write for three years and pick the best ones, but for me, I'd rather hear a group of songs that are all expressing a state, or time of your life. I think it's more that.
The rest of the songs on the album [Mortal City ] have spare arrangements on them. Steve [Miller], really loved that. He'd just come off of a project with someone who basically had to mask the fact that there were no songs there with production. He said, "Oh, my God, you have real songs here!"
To get 300 songs to fit together on an album, it's not like I choose 300 songs and say these are the ones I wanted to pick. To get those 300 songs I sampled 1000's of songs and narrowed down the ones I felt worked the best musically.
I read the reviews sometimes, but I don't let it really affect the next album because, for me, when I approach an album, it's usually coming to me pretty naturally. It's not like I set out, like, "Okay, I'm going to write an album this month." It's more like I'm just always writing songs and eventually I start to realize that a group of songs sort of fits together, and I go from there in putting together the album and themes and artwork and things like that.
When I wrote those first songs for the Truckers, songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day,' those were strong songs, very strong songs. But had I been in the position of writing an entire album at that point in time, I don't think the whole album would have been of that kind of quality.
My own personal tastes don't really have an effect on whether song is a parody target or not. But having said that, I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I'm working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life. So I try not to pick songs that I know would drive me crazy.
We had just played a sold-out show and it had been a fun night when we heard the news. It brought everything back to reality. He was a brilliant guy. He was an aerospace engineer and an entrepreneur. We were just starting to write new songs two weeks after he died. We were still grieving. So that was naturally a big subject matter for the album.
We're very historically tried and true when it comes to our albums. We pick the best songs; we get rid of the songs we feel don't fit on the album, and we don't work on remixing or remastering albums.
A lot of the album is made of love songs I've written over the past three or four years that have lasted the test of time. It's probably the thing that connects the songs together other than the sound of my vocals.
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