It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music.

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.

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself.

The future has a lot to do with the past.

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.

I needed to get into a nightclub and stand up and present the material that way. I needed to present it live.

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.