17 Lessons Musicians Learned From Their Moms

If my sister and I bitched about being bored, my mom would say, ‘Well, go make something. There's an entire art room. I don't wanna hear it. Go outside.’ We didn't have cable—we had dial-up, but if you wanna wait ten years to get on AIM, go ahead—but we didn't really fixate on stuff like that. We lived probably 35 miles from a mall. So it was like, ‘Welp, alright. I'll go ride a bike or throw eggs at a tree.’ My mom always had a big T-shirt on with paint all over it. She was constantly painting. For some reason I really picture her in pleated-front khakis, too. That was her jam. Classic Karen Musgraves. She loved Nickel Creek. I remember her playing that kind of stuff around the house—bluegrass. She has a musical ear, and we'd listen to the radio and she'd teach me to pick out the harmony part, so I kinda learned how to hear that from her. In [my song] ‘Biscuits,’ this always reminds me of my mom: If you ain't got nothing nice to say, don't say nothin' at all. She's a really kind, tolerant person. She's not really a shit-talker. This is her thing: ‘Just kill 'em with kindness.’

My mom always said, ‘When you out there, trust nobody.’ She said a lot of things, but I could see what she was saying with that. This is a funny business. There's vultures everywhere.