One of the people I heard early on in his career was Eric Church. I liked him and his music.
Crazy Arms' is one of those songs that can get crushed beneath its own weight. It's kind of like 'Orange Blossom Special' or 'Rocky Top' or 'Crazy.' But when you go back to the original interpretation, you hear it in a new way.
I went out on the road when I was 12 years old, playing with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers. That was the summer of 1972. We played Pentecostal churches, camp meetings, George Wallace campaign rallies and bluegrass festivals. As a kid, I had grown up watching quartets that were very entertaining.
Unconditional love goes a long way.
Country music as a genre, as an art form, is just as valid out there in the pantheon of the arts as classical, jazz, ballet, whatever.
When I started making some paychecks, I didn't invest in stocks and bonds - I invested in American culture.
I started out in gospel music. A lot of people don't know that I started out in gospel music, and I've never lost sight of it.
Every time I hear a Garth Brooks record I tend to want to hear James Taylor.
If you look at just right, there's not a nickel's worth of difference between what Buck Owens and the Buckaroos played on 'Buckaroo' and what the Ventures were playing. It's all that twangy instrumental stuff.
Walking into the Ryman with Lester Flatt was the equivalent of walking into the Vatican with the pope.
To me, all music that is made under the umbrella of the United States of America is Americana music.
After something has run its course, you either become a parody and keep doing it, or tear it down and know the truth about it, warts and all.
As a photographer, God's light in Southern California is something unlike I've ever seen on planet Earth. There's a beauty about it, especially in the afternoon that is so pretty.
Well, the things that country music is parodied for sometimes - trains, drinking, sin, cheating, redemption, jailhouses, rambling, hoboing, on and on, all those things - according to The New York Times, every one of those subject matters is still relevant.
The stories in our music form a special viewpoint on the story of America in the 20th Century.
The only two jobs I ever had were with Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash.
I have a low-tech camera with one lens that I've shot everything in my life on. My subjects and my subject matter sometimes really are powerful, and so my job is to get it into focus.
There was a junk store in Nashville on 8th Avenue, where I bought Patsy Cline's train case for $75.
Hillbilly Rock' was the song that opened the door and gave me a reason to get a bus and a band and cowboy clothes to go out there and figure it out in front of everybody. And the hits started coming.
My mother named me for Marty Robbins.