My father was a cotton farmer first and - but he didn't have any land or what land he had, he lost it in the Depression. So he worked as a woodman and cut pulpwood for the paper mills, rode the rails in boxcars going from one harvest to another to try to make a little money picking fruit or vegetables.

A song stylist is, like, to take an old folk song like "Delia's Gone" and do a modern white man's version of it.

I would take songs that I'd loved as a child and redo them in my mind for the new voice I had, the low voice.

The beer and the wurst were wonderful, but I was dying to be back in the South, where the livin' was easy, where the fish were jumpin', where the cotton grew high.

There's a man going 'round taking names / And he decides who to free and who to blame / Everybody won't be treated all the same / There'll be a golden ladder reaching down / When the Man comes around.

Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.

All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren't worse or hate negativity and bitterness that things aren't better ...I choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren't worse.