I enjoy writing songs that could have been written before [my time]. When I feel like I'm tapping into a deep vein in the body of American music, it gives me strength as a writer, like I'm dipping my pen into a deep ink well. That's the folk music tradition. Like Pete Seeger said, 'Everyone's a link in the chain.' It's a strong chain, so rely on it. ... I believe it takes all those great songs in the past to make your song even a little bit good.

We never had a girl in the band. Why? Certainly there's some rippin' female players in our kind of music. We have no objection to it. It'd be wonderful.

Sometimes our significant others travel with us.

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.

I think it is good for people who are incarcerated or who are bound up one way or the other-people like Lily Kimball and all the prostitues of Memphis. This gal, she needs some wings, and a good song can make that happen.

This indie rock stuff, I mean I like it, too - it pushes all my buttons: sex appeal, dissonance. It's emotive, disenchanted.

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.