I didn't have a blueprint from my childhood that I could call on, which is an enormous deficit when you're trying to put together a family life. I didn't see a family life where men were thriving inside of it. You know, my dad tended to blame the family for his inability to achieve what he wanted to achieve, you know? So, unfortunately, I was coming from that particular frame of mind.

I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses - that's not the American dream. That's the booby prize, in the end. Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them - if, when you achieve them, you believe that this is the end in and of itself - then you've been suckered in. Because those are the consolation prizes, if you're not careful, for selling yourself out, or letting the best of yourself slip away.

I studied other singers, so I would learn how to phrase, and learn how to breathe. And the main thing was, I learned how to inhabit my song.

There's people that get a chance to do the kind of work that changes the world, and make things really different. And there's the kind that just keeps the world from falling apart.

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

Madman drummers, bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat. In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat.

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