I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.

The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.

I'm a very disciplined person when it comes to my work, but discipline can't save m from being a drug addict.

I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.

I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into.