When you start writing songs on your own, there's no Bible, there's no one around you, so you're just writing, and you're left with, like, the dead space in your head to know if it's a good song or an interesting concept.

Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can.

Where I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it wasn't the south-east and it wasn't the deep south and it wasn't quite the south-west either.

I didn't have a phone there for about 10 years.

I rarely have any contact with the artists who cover my songs.

Playing out in a band all the time at least you made money. Even if you have a hit song, it takes about two years to pay.

I sure love to write songs, but I'm not so sure of my voice.

I cut all my early records in Nashville, so I guess that makes me country. I call it country pop, but my love of the blues is in there, too.

The music is the same if you go all the way back to the first albums I made or the middle or whatever. The thing that's different is the lyrics.

If I was strictly an artist, I'd have to learn to dance and get a shiny suit and stuff.

I'm basically a songwriter, man. Songwriters are down in the fine print, you know? And I really enjoy that.

I was kind of a sideman. Then I became kind of a singer-songwriter.

All my music sounds the same to me.

I would never ever sing at all if I could get away with it. I had pitch problems, no range. So what I did was manipulate the sound... that way you couldn't tell that I wasn't very good.

I'm a recording studio guy, an engineer, a songwriter and a guitar player, in that order.

I'm an electronic manipulator. Most people think J.J. Cale, he's organic. There ain't nothing organic about me.

I was an engineer for a long time. I was a sideman guitar player.

A lot of people are coming down on people taking old rock 'n' roll songs and making commercials out of them, but from a songwriter's standpoint, I don't mind because it helps pay my rent.

Ask any guitar player - it's hard to feed yourself when you're picking for a living.

I ain't got much to say.

I just play my guitar and push my songs and I'd like to keep it quiet.

I'd do the blues all the time if I could, that's what I'm into. But people just don't like to hear it.

No. 1, I'm a songwriter, and I don't really get out and tour.

Everybody lives in a city, cause there's not too many people in the small towns who can find work.