It's not very long ago that we were all singing country music. And country music is equally black as it is white and that's important to recognize.

I didn't grow up on the porch of a cabin looking out over the 90 acres that the mule was plowing with Paw-Paw playing the banjo. But I was always interested in folk music.

Sometimes our significant others travel with us.

Country music has been empowering to women. Women invented it - it was women singing to their children that built country music. The people making country music today might not even know that it all started with a midwife. But it's true, it really did. That's where Michael learned to shake it the way he did. It wasn't from old Papa Jackson, I'll tell you that.

We weren't straight-A students. We didn't start playing until we were teenagers, and we started playing rock and roll and punk rock - power chords - before we ever thought we would play folk music. So virtuosity was just never in my reach.

Because music gets you high, so it makes sense to sing about what else gets you high.

I heard Pete Seeger records when I was a kid. I saw Bob Dylan when I was about 12. The first song I ever learned to play was a song by Phil Ochs.