Latest Dwight Yoakam Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear the son of God discloses. And he walks with me, and he talks with me. And he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Fall, Son, Garden

  "Dwight Yoakam Says New Album Was Inspired By Coal Mining And Mountain Music". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 6, 2016.

• When the whistle blows each morning and I walk down in that cold, dark mine, say a prayer to my dear savior. Please let me see the sunshine one more time. When oh when will it be over? When will I lay these burdens down? And when I die, dear lord in heaven, please take my soul from 'neath that cold, dark ground.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Morning, Prayer, Sunshine

  "Dwight Yoakam Says New Album Was Inspired By Coal Mining And Mountain Music". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 6, 2016.

• I was raised in the Church of Christ, which was a very abstinent faith. And I just didn't [drink] - there was never anything that I found seductive enough, I guess, to have a romance with it.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Seductive, Romance, Church

  Source: www.npr.org

• I guess I stayed with the faith. I mean, organized religion is not something that I've maintained a direct connection to in my life, but the spirituality of it has had an indelible impact on my life and remains with me.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Mean, Impact, Connections

  "Dwight Yoakam Says New Album Was Inspired By Coal Mining And Mountain Music". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 6, 2016.

• I don't really drink, but I've been around a lot of drinking and, at 18, when you start playing in bars, you start to witness the good, the bad and the ugly of alcohol as a source of escape. I wrote about it because I witnessed its use as a means of medicating - a lot of people using it to medicate themselves from hurt.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Hurt, Drinking, Mean

  Source: www.npr.org

• I listen to hundreds of those hymns sung repeatedly over the years of my life. And I know that they probably influenced a rhyme scheme maybe to certain extent. They influenced the pentameter of placement of words, etc. And it's not something that's a conscious thing that occurred.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Years, Hymns, Etc

  Source: www.npr.org

• It's more in retrospect as I've thought about it over the years and look back at what I wrote, how I wrote things - like there's a song that Ralph Stanley later recorded with me that he had guested on my record what was called "Travelers Lantern" that I wrote as basically, you know, a hymn.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Song, Years, Hymns

  Source: www.npr.org

• Those songs [from church], I think, shaped to some degree how I would evolve as a writer, pentameter of songs, the melodies of those kind of hillbilly hymns - I used to refer to them - because they were not Southern gospel as much as they were passed down from Scottish Welsh Protestant hymnals.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Song, Thinking, Hymns

  Source: www.npr.org

• They both sang. My grandmother had a very haunted mountain voice and would sing hymns. My grandpa would sing but in a very, very subdued way.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Grandmother, Hymns, Voice

  "Dwight Yoakam Says New Album Was Inspired By Coal Mining And Mountain Music". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, ksjd.org. December 6, 2016.

• The congregation that I was raised in was one that sang and a non-instrumental fashion. It was all a cappella singing, and so that had a major influence on me.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Fashion, Singing, Influence

  Source: www.npr.org

• Sadly, I wish I had been able to play ["Miner's Prayer"] for [grandfather]. Yeah, I'll never escape the influence of him in my life. And my - his wife, my grandmother, Earlene Tibbs - those experiences with them shaped me musically probably more profoundly than anything else in my life and shaped me as a writer.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Prayer, Grandmother, Play

  Source: www.npr.org

• I always knew about as a kid, knew that that particular injury at [my grandfather's] finger had been caused in that disaster that killed his brother-in-law, my grandmother's brother. And he never talked about his own brother's death to me. My mother told me about that and told me about the impact on her family. And that's part of what you hear in the first verse of "Miner's Prayer."

  Dwight Yoakam

  Mother, Brother, Prayer

  Source: www.npr.org

• I wrote "Miner's Prayer" after [grandfather] died. I'd gone back to his funeral, and he died in 1979. And I came back to California, and I think a couple of weeks after that funeral wrote that song thinking about him, his life.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Song, Prayer, Couple

  Source: www.npr.org

• [My grandfather] was very, very fortunate that he was never trapped in a mining cave-in. But he lost his brother in a mining disaster on a shift that he wasn't working. And he was in a collapse where his brother-in-law was killed very near him in the same section.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Brother, Law, Grandfather

  Source: www.npr.org

• [My grandfather -a miner] had black lung, and he didn't talk about it much. It's almost like a combat veteran. But he witnessed some horrific things.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Black, Grandfather, Veteran

  Source: www.npr.org

• In retrospect I wrote things about my life and my family's existence, I realized that it was a frighteningly harsh way to make a living. And I used to say that they were slowly dying trying to make a living.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Dying, Trying, Retrospect

  Source: www.npr.org

• I heard more of the stories from my mother and my granny and my aunts that would describe what they had known that he didn't often talk about. I remember seeing [grandfather] as a child. He was working in a mine that was fairly close to their home there in Betsy Lane, Ky., and it was so close in proximity that he wouldn't clean up or shower there. He would just drive back home. And I remember one time seeing him come in and it was like seeing an alien person show up because he was still covered in coal dust and soot, and it had a profound impact on me.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Mother, Children, Home

  Source: www.npr.org

• I hope that books don't go the way of albums and CD, large format albums, and physical product.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Book, Cds, Albums

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I think that we come to a greater understanding of the world we live in and ourselves through reading.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Reading, Thinking, Understanding

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I needed to get into a nightclub and stand up and present the material that way. I needed to present it live.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Way, Needed, Materials

  Source: www.pbs.org