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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.