Sturgill Simpson

“Atlantic has been great to me. They didn't flinch when I told them I was self-producing, and nobody was popping their head in the studio.”

“There have been many socially conscious concept albums. I wanted to make a 'social consciousness' concept album disguised as a country record.”

“Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley - guys like that were huge influences.”

“I've always played music. But you know, in eastern Kentucky, everybody plays music.”

“I want all that dirt and grime and life-sauce. A lot of my favorite old soul records have it, but you don't hear it on country records anymore.”

“It's a long road, so we are just trying to stay focused and grounded and keep moving forward. I'll take it, though.”

“I don't pretend to be an astrophysicist or anything, even though I do read about certain things like metaphysics and cosmology that I've always just been really interested in. I don't pretend to be able to sit down and pontificate on any of these subjects.”

“I want people to focus on listening, not the image. And I want to play to everyone: rednecks, dubstep kids, punk rockers, and people who like as-real-as-it-gets country music.”

“I had a great job with the railroad, a good salary.”

“There are no expectations other than those I place on myself to be a great father and husband.”

“Elvis was a way bigger influence than Waylon Jennings, but you don't wanna tell people, 'I never really listened to Waylon.'”

“I've been reading about the idea of cyclical lives - it matches up to the idea of string theory and a multiverse. So I wanted to write a record about that instead of another song about broken hearts and drinking.”

“My wife thinks I'm crazy.”

“Anytime I ever have met someone that was very angry or full of negativity, nine times out of ten, if you really take a good look at that person's life, there's probably not a whole lot of love going on there.”

“I just don't see myself as a songwriter or a country singer or any of those things anymore. It's more trying to express ideas and emotional textures.”

“You can embrace nostalgia and history and tradition at the same time - it has to progress or it can't survive.”

“Part of me still feels like I've never had the opportunity to properly express all my earliest influences, so for now, I find isolation to be my biggest influence.”

“Kentucky isn't particularly religious.”

“My paternal grandfather, when he was in the army in World War II - he was over in the South Pacific, and he thought he was gonna die. And he wrote a letter to my grandmother and their newborn son, thinking he wasn't gonna come home.”

“I'm very grateful, but at the same time, I'm glad all this happened when I'm 36 instead of 26 because I - I'm just such a homebody, and I just want to write songs and make the best record that I can.”