A Quote by Jason Isbell

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.
Usually when a song comes to me, I don't ask a lot of questions; I hear something, and I just let it out in song. It's like making a salad. Everything I hear, and everything I am, I mix together in a different way in each song.
If you're working with a producer like Rick Rubin or whatever, you sing each line probably 30 different ways. Each time, they're like, 'Can you try it this way? Can you try it that way?' That's each line in the song, for each song.
If you're working with a producer like Rick Rubin or whatever, you sing each line probably 30 different ways. Each time they're like, "Can you try it this way, can you try it that way?" That's each line in the song, for each song.
Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I'm going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It's always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.
I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.
Every day somebody comes up to me and says, 'That song really helped me through a difficult time,' or 'That's me and my wife's song' or 'This song means something to me because of... ' It's humbling to hear that. You're something special in someone's life, even if it is for three minutes.
Whenever I hear somebody cover a song, I don't like to hear it stray too far from the original. I like to hear some of the new energy that a band will put into it, but you kind of want to hear some of the basic parts of the song. I mean, that's what makes it the song that you like.
The notoriety you get from when your song is on the radio versus when your song is on a mixtape is two completely different things. And when you get a song get big enough to where it gets played on two stations at the same time in the same city, you're like, 'Damn!'
I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record. Originally I was not writing songs for myself. ....And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves. ... Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential. When you write a song, a song has longevity. ... So I wanted to sing inspirational music, and that's exactly how I approached it-only the words have been changed to declare my relationship with God. Songwriting is my gift from God.
It makes me mad to hear these popular orchestras make a jammed-up comedy of a song like 'Wreck on the Highway.' It ain't a funny song.
I mean, my wife is always like - I don't write lyrics. So I couldn't, like, really technically write a song for anyone. I could write a very nice instrumental. So she always sort of gives me a hard time because it's just such a ridiculously impossible standard to live up to, that your step-dad wrote that song for your mom.
I can't try to write a song - songs come out of me. I have to play the guitar and if I jam a song, boom! That's a song.
I've always been drawn to all kinds of music - to me, it's all the same. There's different arrangements and slightly different ways of writing, but if it's a good song, it's a good song - you can dress it up any way you like.
I don't want to give you the opportunity to find a box to put me in, figure it out later. When the records come out song by song, you'll hear it and get to determine how you want to classify me.
Tinashe doing 'I Wanna Get Better' - it's a really personal song, and it was hard for me to imagine anyone else doing it, but stylistically her and I are so incredibly different that I was fascinated to hear what she'd do with it, and I completely loved it. It just felt like the different expression of a song that, to me, was so stamped in one way.
Like for me, it's funny that I have ended up in so many side projects because I have always looked at any song that I write as a Dawes song.
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