Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first.

But if you're looking to be spooked by really tall trees then you've got to go to Washington State.

Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness. And I like the whole truth, but there are nights I only need forgiveness.

Youll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.

Basically, I have found that people who have tried to start communities out of good feelings or hippie-dippie abstract concepts of love - it doesn't work. But if you just concentrate on what is the identity of your town - its waterfalls, its battles, its notable mill strike or those things - you dig into what your town is from its rock formations to its history to its food. Then this thing called community happens all the time.

And where does magic come from? I think that magic's in the learning.

Hegemony is not defined by rivers or conventional borders - it's dominance, it's influence. So we get to decide in our hearts, are we in Iraq to help restore something, or are we there to establish dominance? How can you torture people and say, well, that's just a few bad apples in our culture?