If you're cool, you don't know nothing about it. It just is, or you ain't.

George Jones is a national treasure and should be treated accordingly. A unique style so often emulated even inadvertently.

Everybody's got a different way of telling a story - and has different stories to tell.

It’s one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It’s another thing to play with him.

I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel.

What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.

Good music comes out of people playing together, knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a TV screen.