Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

You can go out and find ways to make your own record and get it out there now. If you really want to, you can be heard. Keep things simple. Learn to go out and play solo. That's a really really good thing to learn, if you're a singer-songwriter. Don't be dependent on a band because you may not always be able to afford one.

My dad was in a wheelchair and on oxygen for the last few years of his life.

We're Americans. I don't consider us to be evil, I just don't think we know any better. We're a really young culture. We're hillbillies, and the rest of the world sees us that way. I travel all over the world, and probably the only worse rednecks than us are the Australians. And they're an even younger country.

Part of it is, I think, just to let people know you've got a record out there and that you're still alive requires more work than it used to, because the traditional radio, bug chains of record stores, all of that, that doesn't exist anymore.

Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.

What saves me from being a drug addict is sort of the opposite. It's me realizing that I don't really control anything.