I'm often surprised by classical music and musicians. I've met a large number of them because my wife works for the Boston Symphony, and I'm in that world a lot now. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for people who are classically trained to read music or to memorize music, how difficult it is for them to improvise, to just go off and play. It's sort of, it's like terra incognita. They just, (makes noise) they don't get it.

Don't be sad cause your sun is down, the night doesn't need your sorrow. Don't be sad cause the light is gone, just keep your mind on tomorrow.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.

If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about Black music, about soul music.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.