As long as there are Japanese tourists, there will be a market for the Old South.

No one would stand for it [being the fool in the media] in a minute if you took any other group -Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, women - but somehow it's okay to do that with hillbillies.

Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the US to Europe’s wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.

I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like, 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.

I don't think massification and globalization and all those other 'izations' are necessarily hostile to regionalism.

Country music historically has been sort of middle-aged people's music.

The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?