More and more, I see myself as a folk musician, and someone who values context.

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.

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities.

It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who see to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.

Being in Vietnam changed him [Johnny Cash] fundamentally. He was devastated when we went into Iraq.

I have learned to be steady in my course of love, or fear, or loneliness, rather than impulsive in its wasting, either lyrically or emotionally.

Self-expression without craft is for toddlers.