There ain't no way I'm going to be droppin' nothing. If I was in my twenties, maybe. But now I try to keep it looking decent. I don't want to expose too much of my bare ass.

I don't want to be home just taking medicine and waiting to die, you know? That's not something I'm about.

My friend Megan Holken is a nutritionist. I have spent some time at her home upstate in Sharon Springs, where she told me how to eat right and cook right.

There ain't no way I'm going to be droppin' nothing. If I was in my twenties, maybe. But now I try to keep it looking decent. I don't want to expose too much of my bare ass.

Youth. The fact that, in the mid-'90s, guys like Lee Fields gave me and all these young people the chance to do backup. I was in my 30s, but some of those guys were still teenagers. Others were 22 and 23 - babies, all of them.

Every time I do a gig, my goal is getting new fans.

I've got these five-pound weights and a treadmill in the living room. I work out the other parts that have affected my voice: my diaphragm - doctors took mine out in surgery - and my lungs. I've got to build back my legs, too, so I can run across that stage. I've got a lot to do, but I'm going to get out, sing songs and tell the stories.