What makes a good song, especially lyrically?
Your songs have a very conversational side to them, but they always pack this big emotional wallop. Glad to hear you say that. But I don’t put any emphasis on the lyric. I don’t think the lyric. I try to feel the lyric within the music. What the lyric is saying is not that important to me. If it’s good and we’ve had a good day, it’ll say be saying enough. That’s a difference between country or pop and rhythm or blues. The country lyric is usually the main thing, but to me the way the lyric hits the music is the main thing. After your early teen-aged successes in Muscle Shoals, you went to Dallas to work for Cokesbury Bible Store. What led to that? Well, I was young and I was drinking a lot. My aunt Margaret lived out there. Her and mother got together and decided that I could go to Dal-las and live with them. I could get a job and be an upstanding young citizen. I was kind of confused, and decided I didn’t even need this old music, so I went on out there and worked me a job at that sto
