Just a thank you is a mighty powerful prayer. Says it all.

I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.

And I kind of said to myself if I get my voice back I'm not going to take back the old anxiety about it and just focus on the limitations. I'm really going to enjoy it.

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.

I was a songwriter; that was the torch I carried. This is an honorable profession. This is what I do.

Documenting one's life in the midst of living it is a strange pursuit.

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.