Sturgill Simpson Quotes

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

― Sturgill Simpson

“Even with most finite planning, you never know what the final result will reveal itself to be until it’s staring back at you.”

― Sturgill Simpson

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

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Country music especially can get very formulaic – you know, you have to have your verses and a bridge and a chorus, and a lot of the songs are written as just plain and simple poetry on the road.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I worked for Union Pacific. I started out as a conductor at an intermodal switching facility outside of Salt Lake City. We’d pull in trains from all over the country, break them apart, consolidate the freight, and build other trains. It was great until I screwed up and took a management position. Then it became no fun very quickly.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

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

― Sturgill Simpson

“I think when you’re dealing with any issues about trying to become a better human being, you have to look at a lot of things about yourself that maybe you don’t want to or aren’t able to.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Saviours get crucified.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Some people will say, and have said, that I’m trying to run from country, but I’m never going to make anything other than a country record.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I thought it was hilarious when ‘Brace for Impact’ was released, and people said I had abandoned country, even though the song is dripping with pedal steel. If anything, that tells me I’m making progress.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Looking back on it, now I can identify the points in my life when I wasn’t playing, and music – and didn’t have that outlet – those were the points when I was most unguided and self destructive because I didn’t have that channel to get those energies out. I’m a much healthier person when I play music.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I walked in, looked around, and the navy recruiter was a really hot brunette, so I signed up with her.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I’m grateful to all the non-risk-takers.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“The art is what can’t be put on a timeline. You can’t say, ‘Well, I’m going to make a record in May because that’s when the producer has a window.’ So just recording and getting things out is paramount for me.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“All I’m really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I just can’t sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don’t find it inspiring.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I knew I wanted to make a concept record in song-cycle form, like my favorite Marvin Gaye records where everything just continuously flows.”

― Sturgill Simpson

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

― Sturgill Simpson

“I’m just gonna write a record for my kid, and if people hate it, it doesn’t matter.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I didn’t graduate from college, so I might as well be on Atlantic Records, right?”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I knew I loved playing bluegrass, so I’d end up down there on Sunday nights at the bluegrass jam.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I just have to do what it is going to make me happy, first and foremost – what is honest and what is sincere. Anybody that listens will hopefully connect with that.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Let’s just cut a live record with three microphones in four days and talk about lizards and aliens. If I had taken that idea to even an independent label, I don’t see a label out there that would’ve said, ‘Oh yeah, that sounds great. We know how to market this.’”

― Sturgill Simpson

“It’s hard enough to sit at a table and talk to most people as it is. But we can go to some town, and there’s 300 people we’ve never met before, and by the third song, we’re connecting with everyone in that room.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“You spend all this time reading or thinking or praying or searching or exploring.Maybe there’s an Omega Point of love.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I tried to make a honky-tonk country record – rough-hewn, cut fast, and all analog – like I wasn’t hearing anymore.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“There’s a lot going on in country music, with indie-label hipsters and underground bloggers arguing their interpretations of what country is, and pop-country stars defending themselves. That deserves to be poked fun at.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“My wife thinks I’m crazy.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Both my grandfathers and my mother’s brother were musicians.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Back home, playing music is never anything you imagine you can do for a living. It’s what you do after work.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Anything that I’m naturally curious about, I get really into. Maybe it’s O.C.D. I get really consumed by something until I absorb it, then I’m done with it.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I used to play a lot of electric guitar. I don’t really consider myself a guitar player anymore. Then I got really into how the pickups work. And winding and de-winding Telecaster pickups. And then building Telecasters. And I became more fascinated with making them than I was with actually playing them. So it’s a slippery slope.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I grew up listening to everything. I was in rock n’ roll bands and punk bands, and I loved bluegrass and country music, too. Then, when I moved to Nashville, I put out a very traditional country record because that’s just what you do. I had a bunch of very traditional country songs. Next thing you know, you’re a country singer.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“You make a little noise, and you can sell out your local hometown club. But then you drive an hour down the road to the next town, and there might be eight people there.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I pretty much just hang out with the kid. I want, like three more, because that’s all I ever want to do.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Kentucky isn’t particularly religious.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I love tape. It’s another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I someday hope to find the time and coin to invest more of my creative energy towards the visual media side of releasing music.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I’d love to make short film videos pushing the conventional standards of what a country music video can be.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I lived in Japan when I was younger for about two years. I spent my time equally between religiously studying Aikido in Shinjuku by day and hard partying in Shibuya and Roppongi by night.”

― 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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

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

― Sturgill Simpson

“I wanted to make an album that takes a journey through all my favorite periods in music and then culminates in something that will most likely end my career.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I could go back to the railroad. I liked that job.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I never really had any grand aspirations of mainstream country success because I know what that entails, and I’d probably be too much trouble for people to work with. If I can just reach the point where I can get 200 or 300 people in small clubs and I’m carving out enough money to pay my bills, then I’m the happiest guy I know.”

― Sturgill Simpson

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

― Sturgill Simpson

“I’m interested in exploring various forms of newer media that might allow those who otherwise don’t listen to country to find and connect with my music.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three – so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“London’s been really good to me – England as a whole – but the Scots and the Irish especially are very appreciative because that’s kind of where it all came from.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I find that I have to just kind of avoid the Internet as much as possible. And even more so, when I go and look at it, I remember why I should be avoiding it.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I fail to see how anything can still be weird in 2016.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I needed a writing space to get out of my house with the little guy. Because any time I try to write or sit down and do things, he wants to be there with me and play the guitar.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“That might be completely self-indulgent, to write your first major-label debut as a dedication to your family. But, you know, that’s where my heart was.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I just really want to make – to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Fewer and fewer bars are doing live music. Instead it’s more DJs and dance parties.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I saw Dolly Parton play at the Glastonbury Festival to about 120,000 people. It was an ocean of human beings. I was a mile away from the stage, and I swear to God, I could feel her energy.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I’m not meant to sit on the couch and not play music. But I never want to feel like I have to put out a record. I don’t want to ever make those records.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“The only way I’m going to support my family is to tour. I love playing, don’t get me wrong. That 90 minutes every night, that’s free. We get paid to travel. But every night, I have to get myself locked in. There are a thousand people that don’t want to be disappointed, because they have a lot of expectations.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“I’ll never get tired of being told I sound like Waylon Jennings, but I don’t hear it myself.”

― Sturgill Simpson

“Music Row gets dragged through the dirt, but they’re just trying to survive.”

― Sturgill Simpson

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

― Sturgill Simpson

“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.”

― Sturgill Simpson

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

― Sturgill Simpson