Sadly, I wish I had been able to play ["Miner's Prayer"] for [grandfather]. Yeah, I'll never escape the influence of him in my life. And my - his wife, my grandmother, Earlene Tibbs - those experiences with them shaped me musically probably more profoundly than anything else in my life and shaped me as a writer.

No compression or as little as possible - that's how you get a good recording.

The actual work of recording a record or making a film just requires that you consciously block the time out to do that and nothing else. That's what I do.

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.

Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.

I embrace country music because of love, a love of what I came from.

The future has a lot to do with the past.