I think country music is a champion of women. That stuff coming out of Nashville now wants to see a woman looking good in the kitchen whipping up some biscuits.

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.

Country music is the combination of African and European folk songs coming together and doing a little waltz right here in the American south. They came together at some cotillion, and somebody snuck a black person into the room, and he danced with a white lady, and music was born.

I guess it's a bit like not claiming your brother at school. This kind of disowning of the thing that you're most like. You want to be something cool, like Michael Jackson say, with a boom box over your shoulder and wearing leather. But you know deep down you're just a hayseed.

It’s bound to be one hell of a steel wheelin, railroadin good time…while the western country rolls by and the smoke rises blacker than musical notes pouring out of that stoked-up-and-chuggin iron chariot.

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

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.