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.

Both my parents worked, so I was home alone a lot, and I would listen to their records. They belonged to the Columbia House record club, so they had records!

It's true that I did get the girl, but then my grandfather always said, Even a blind chicken finds a few grains of corn now and then.

Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.

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.

I'm really in no danger of being perceived as a famous movie actor!

You can't second-guess your audience. You can only do what you think is right. If you do that, your audience will appreciate you.