Somewhere along the way, the idea, which I think was initially to get some fair transaction between people, went out the window. And what came in was, the most you can get and the least you can give. That's why cars are the way they are nowadays. It's just an erosion of all the things that were true and right about the original idea.

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.

I had no credit cards. I had no checks. I was cash only until I was probably 30 years old.

You weren't supposed to hear Elvis Presley. You weren't supposed to hear Jerry Lee Lewis. You weren't supposed to hear Robert Johnson. You weren't supposed to hear Hank Williams. And they told the story of the secret America.

All I try to do is write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.

No, I always felt that amongst my core fans- because there was a level of popularity that I had in the mid '80s that was sort of a bump on the scale- they fundamentally understood the values that are at work in my work.

From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap, through the Badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.