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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I've always played music. But you know, in eastern Kentucky, everybody plays music.

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.

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.'