So for a long time I closed my eyes to the possibility of America having a white voice.

I've been scared and I've liked not hanging on to stuff where I know that I'm in my comfort zone.

I'll just carry on being a dated flower child.

Life isn't moving quickly - time moves very quickly. But I don't really have a schedule now that's very challenging. I make the calls and I call the shots, so I feel reasonably centered. Sometimes, I wonder whether or not it's even necessary to do concerts and stuff.

I'm just lucky because my kids are grown-up - I love them, very proud of them, and we are in close contact as big-time friends, but they don't need me that much now and I can actually enjoy this wonderful world of music.

What I lack in style and craft, I can make up for in joy and enthusiasm. I like to be around people who are at ease so I like to think the 25-year-old would find me quite an easy-going late-middle-aged hippie.

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.