I wrote "Miner's Prayer" after [grandfather] died. I'd gone back to his funeral, and he died in 1979. And I came back to California, and I think a couple of weeks after that funeral wrote that song thinking about him, his life.

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

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

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself.

I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear the son of God discloses. And he walks with me, and he talks with me. And he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

I think that we come to a greater understanding of the world we live in and ourselves through reading.

The congregation that I was raised in was one that sang and a non-instrumental fashion. It was all a cappella singing, and so that had a major influence on me.