I think actors are at the mercy of the opportunities presented to them. So you kind of have to wait for them to choose you. My music is insular - I can choose that.

As an artist, you have to maintain focus and eliminate the distraction of second-guessing yourself based on the opinions of others.

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.

We started shooting, and then Jodie found out she was pregnant. Forest broke it to me - he'd gone to work and heard it on the radio! It seemed like the movie was doomed. But, like these characters, there was a disregard for all the signs along the way.

I always knew about as a kid, knew that that particular injury at [my grandfather's] finger had been caused in that disaster that killed his brother-in-law, my grandmother's brother. And he never talked about his own brother's death to me. My mother told me about that and told me about the impact on her family. And that's part of what you hear in the first verse of "Miner's Prayer."

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.

My parents were not affluent people and were not - didn't come from the extremities of education. My mother had a high school diploma. I often think I so wish she'd come out of the hills in Appalachia and been able to go on to college. I think she would have made a wonderful teacher.