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.

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.

Like anybody else of my era, I listened to a whole lot of Michael Jackson. I guess I was probably inspired by the way he danced, and the way he sang, and his image.

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.

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.

Y'all drinking whiskey is probably a gregarious act. When you're not an alcoholic it's pretty fun to drink whiskey. But when you are it's a very solo ritual. It's not gregarious at all. But vice has always informed country music and all music.

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.