Musicians exist independent of any of the marketing terms or the categorization.

I heard more of the stories from my mother and my granny and my aunts that would describe what they had known that he didn't often talk about. I remember seeing [grandfather] as a child. He was working in a mine that was fairly close to their home there in Betsy Lane, Ky., and it was so close in proximity that he wouldn't clean up or shower there. He would just drive back home. And I remember one time seeing him come in and it was like seeing an alien person show up because he was still covered in coal dust and soot, and it had a profound impact on me.

My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.

They both sang. My grandmother had a very haunted mountain voice and would sing hymns. My grandpa would sing but in a very, very subdued way.

I don't really drink, but I've been around a lot of drinking and, at 18, when you start playing in bars, you start to witness the good, the bad and the ugly of alcohol as a source of escape. I wrote about it because I witnessed its use as a means of medicating - a lot of people using it to medicate themselves from hurt.

I am probably the last of a generation able to gain an education in country music by osmosis, by sitting in a '64 Ford banging the buttons on the radio.

I've always been just kind of consumed by my own thoughts.