When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.

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.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

All it really needed was the proper point of view. No one's gonna bring me down.

It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.

Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.

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.