I played guitar when I was young and never really considered it as a way to make a living

When I first was trying to play the clubs around Houston to start playing my own songs, songwriters like Eric Taylor and Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt and Don Sanders were just really encouraging to me and would let me sit in with them during their sets and introduce me to the person that owned and booked the club.

The most important thing you can do as a performer is to be yourself, or be an onstage version of yourself. If youre not being true to yourself, and somebody likes that other version of you, youre kind of stuck.

If it's not too late, make it a cheese-burger

Every afternoon, I was in the pasture with cattle or fishing and shooting my BB gun. That kind of freedom allows imagination to develop.

It's really a lot easier to write about things that are problematic. Who wants to hear how happy you are?

I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard.