The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.

I don't get in vote in whether or how people remember me when I'm gone. It's really dangerous to sit around and worry about it too much, for me. It gets me way too in myself to worry about what people are going to think about me when I'm not around anymore.

Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.

Funerals are a pagan rite. There's not any doubt about it.

What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

My main area of activism is the death penalty, and it will continue to be once this crisis is over with.

My politics were really radical when I was younger, and then I moderated like everyone else does when they start having kids.