Quotable Country – 05/09/10 Edition

Click the bullet after each quote to visit the original source.

What do you think? Boys and love. ●
- – Taylor Swift on the subject matter of her next album.

I think my life did go the way it was supposed to go for me. There were mistakes I made that you could call wrong. But I think that every single situation that’s happened in my life has happened not just for me to learn from but for other people to learn from, too. I can either be ashamed and humiliated about that, or I can be proud that I was chosen to have that kind of life circumstance put on my shoulders. ●
- – Put on her shoulders? Pretty sure that probation violations, drunk driving charges, and sex tapes are manmade woes, Mindy McCready.

Country music is what I’ve grown up listening to and what I feel I fit most comfortably with. The people who inspire me the most are Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban. They have such great, honest music, and I have such a great time performing country music. I see myself hopefully going down that road. ●
- – Ousted American Idol contesant Aaron Kelly. Uh oh.

With dead-tree writing and polycarbonate-plastic vibrating on the outs, with the digital bazaar buzzing around us and ever-spreading, the need for filters, for direction and shape, is greater than ever. I have no idea what kind of company might provide the service — maybe not a label or a magazine — or whether it will emerge before the waning models are long-interred, but I feel certain that we’ll need for-profit companies to offer sorting and impregnate with status, to point us toward bright needles in the digital haystack. Their judgments won’t be unimpeachable, but their higher task will be to give us a little order and some shared meaning in our art, even an imperfect order, even a meaning imposed from without. ●
- – Robbie Fulks on the need for filtering mechanisms in a digital (post-label?) world.

Operator, please
Put me through to Baton Rouge
A cell phone? What’s that? ●
- – Garth’s a little behind the times, via Country Haiku.

Q: Were there any notes or gifts from other artists that stand out, following your wins at the ACMs?
A: I got a telegram from Alan Jackson. I don’t even know how to send a telegram! It was the coolest thing ever. Just saying, “Congratulations on your awards, Alan Jackson.” ‘That’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. And my manager said, “Someone wants to send you a telegram, where do you want that sent?” I said, “How do you send a telegram? What is that?” ●
- – Speaking of which, Miranda Lambert reveals that Alan Jackson’s a Meat and Potato and Telegraph Man.

Q: So you’re still riding high now, a few weeks later, from those wins?
A: I’m one of those people that will milk it to the last drop when I win something. I’m still talking about Album of the Year that I won two years ago! If Blake’s been bad, I say, “You can’t talk to me like that, I won Album of the Year!” I have a lot more leverage; it is awesome [laughs]. ●
- – Miranda on her ACM wins.

I get e-mail from people who tell me they love live music. They’re out every night hearing new bands. Nothing sounds worse to me. Never mind all that schlepping. The lyrics are unintelligible because the band’s turned up its amps to crowd out not only every empty space in the venue, but every nook and cranny in your brain. In beating you over the head for attention your main desire is to leave. But somehow this is a no-no, indicating that you don’t love music, that you’re not open to anything new. ●
- – Sounds like Bob Lefsetz has the same love-hate relationship with live shows that I do.

I’ve got Madonna on my iPod. I’ve got Britney [Spears] on my iPod. I think [Britney's] ‘Toxic’ is a great record. ●
- – Eric Church takes a minute’s rest from being an outlaw.

You don’t have to be selfish because your ambition and drive is for your family members as much as for yourself. Along the way you pick up wives and kids and you are responsible for them. You don’t discard them. There is no such thing as ex-wives, only additional wives. ●
- – Willie Nelson on being motivated by the need to support all of his kids… and wives.

Historically, country music would rather an artist be a drunk — they even encourage and endorse that one. You get good money from Jim Beam to put that emblem on the side of your bus. I was on the Crown Royal tour, and I have to say it was one of my favorite tours. They would rather you were a drug addict than be gay. They will forgive you if you beat your wife, lose your kids to state, get six divorces, make a sex tape, get labeled as a tramp — any and all of it is better than being gay. ●
- – Chely Wright.

I worked in Nashville for over 20 years, and the only thing that has changed is there is more of it. Money has ruined the art. I won’t ever do any of the songs I recorded over 10 years ago. That material was not what I wanted to do, and I have no emotional attachment to the old songs. ●
- – Shelby Lynne doesn’t like her old stuff.

We appreciate you paying our rent for the past 20 years. ●
- – Vineyard owner Kix Brooks to fans. If he’s still renting at this point, he’s done something wrong.

I think just that I accept them for who they are and respect them as people and try to teach them to do the right thing and support them with whatever they want to do … and I’m fun. [Laughs] I hope they’d say I’m fun. ●
- – ‘Fun mom’ Martina McBride on what she hopes her kids would say about her. Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.