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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sometimes our significant others travel with us.