I wanted to be the writer in the room setting depth charges of feeling out the world with my language.You know, I had a very romantic idea about that.But I grew into being a performer.

Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.

As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.

No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.

I don't do comparisons because I always lose.

Isn't that the goal, as you grow older? That you start reclaiming those parts of yourself you didn't recognize or didn't think were there all along? That's what happened when I made The River and the Thread record.

While visiting places in the South with my heart really open, I realized how important people in certain geographical spots were to me, what they symbolize, how I'm still connected to them and how much they are a part of my ancestry, both musical and real.