And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.

Your spoken voice is a part of it - not a big part of it, but it's something. It puts people at ease, and once again kind of reaches out and makes a bridge for what's otherwise difficult music.

Don't run back inside, darlin', you know just what I'm here for. So you're scared and you're thinkin' we ain't that young any more...Show a little faith! There's magic in the night. You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're all right.

An unfulfilled life makes a hard man.

If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with.

I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.

For me, once I count the band in, and I delve deep into my song, I feel a certain sort of integrity and integration that I rarely find in my daily life.