Sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins.

I was angry at my parents when I had to have brain surgery, that they weren't still around, because no matter how old you are you want you parents when you're going through something like that.

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.

Because I was starting out in my 20's. I wanted to do it on my own. I didn't want to use my dad or have people say I was using him.

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.

When I was eleven I stopped dreaming the dreams that didn't come true, I stopped talking to people who didn't listen, I lost hope and I retreated. I assumed that the root of the problem was that I was too strange for the real world. That being the case, I created a charming and dynamic personality to make the necessary forays into the Outside, and I kept my strangeness for myself; my own peculiar jewels under lock and key.

I spent nearly two hours deciding on an outfit that would look as if the subject of clothing had never crossed my mind, but would in fact show off my best features and miraculously hide the extra pounds.