New York has always had a love for Southern artists. There's no place else that makes me feel like the city does. I just love the immediate nature of the city, you can get whatever you want whenever you want it and do whatever you want whenever you want to.

I've never been good at rock'n'roll songs, anyway; either I'm blessed or I'm cursed, but whatever I write comes out sounding old.

I've always written. When I was in school, the only teacher who ever liked me was my creative writing teacher. I used to enter poetry competitions, and I don't think I ever lost one. So I had the idea for a while of being some kind of poet.

I don't think I have any right to say I belong to that [Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan tradition]. I think that's something that eventually maybe you get inducted into. I'm just experimenting.

I discovered the same thing Gram Parsons did, that soul music and country music are practically identical. Based off of the same chord structures, and the songs are of heartache and loss. The main connection is they both came up in church.

What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

There's a certain urgency that comes from the records of the early 60s before overdubbing and multitracking came into play.