I'm honored when young people say they've gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don't know it's me.

It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.

Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste.

Life is simple yet complex, in the complexity we realize everything is simple for we create our own happiness, our own sadness & our own destiny by not making a choice you have chosen so face life with courage and faith in yourself.

The arts can be a great way to bring people together. I don't preach from the stage. I try to stay positive on solutions.

Those of us with a microphone who are blessed with the gift of being in the public eye have a special opportunity to give voice to all those groups whose activism is sometimes ignored or put on the back pages with the the dumbing down of television and the tabloidization of journalism. As Ralph Nader called it, "sound barks," not even sound bites.

A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.