It was never too late to undo who you had become.

Celtic music is part of the language in Scotland and Ireland, where every kid and grandparent knows those songs, music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Snow is getting entrenched here. They are part of our cultural language. It's part of a living treasure. It doesn't just belong to a museum.

Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.

When my dad died a lot of songs came, and they're still coming.

Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn't mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn't even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what's happening.

I'm a songwriter. My voice just serves what I'm writing about. So to let all that go, I mean, bring the sensibilities of it actually to the song choices, but to just be the interpreter was incredibly liberating and really fun.

The thing that scares me most is the shift from serving the people to exercising power and with it, this attendant narcissism. Sarah Palin is a great example of someone that just stirs the pot for the sake of the attention.