People hate good books to be over. I wish I could write a 700-page book.
I don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.
Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years.
When I write something simple I'm always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious - that everybody wants to be happy and free - the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that's what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.
I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.
I still write more songs about girls than anything else.
I'm used to writing stories with a beginning a middle and an end in four minutes.
Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.
Back then, the business depended on bohemians. ... They needed Kristofferson and Roger Miller ..It was the tail end of something...the last Tin Pan Alley. ...and we were the night shift! They gave us keys, because they knew the best songs weren't written in daylight.... We got our keys taken away several times...me and Guy Clark.
The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe.
Poetry is the hardest thing that there is. It fascinates me, so I want to write more of it.
Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.
By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.
At home, I'm lucky if I can write three or four hours before the phone starts ringing and the kids want to go to soccer.
