Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A fullblown storm where everything changes.

Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God - playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven - shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys - perfect harmony - perfect joy.

The search is in the doing.

In this society, we don't like to face the future and the dying process and all of it. Most of us really don't want to think about it, but it's facing me in the mirror every day.

Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.