It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel.

After a war, after a concentration camp, I find it's not too difficult to be happy.

I studied acting and there's certainly an element of performance. I think that the songs are in many ways written to be performed. I think about what it's going to be like to sing them on stage rather than what it's going to be like to have someone at home listening to them on a CD. I guess in that way there's a connection between my acting experience and the songwriting and the way the songs are written.

Who was that fatman buried in your place? Just another imitator, plastic surgeons did his face.

Geoff Muldaur was and is one of my musical heroes. When I listen to him sing and play, I can hear the coal mine, the cotton field, and last, but certainly foremost, the boy's boarding school.

Displaying a bland, even an eerie, disregard for what appeared to be the facts of the situation, he fell back on an old habit of looking ahead to the next defeat.

I'm writing about what's happening to me now. I mean, I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that?