When was about 16 or 17, I was living in Beaumont, Texas and Carlos Montoya came to Lamar College. I went to see him and I didn't know what flamenco was. But when I saw him play, I was blown away that one man on one instrument could make all that sound. I'd learned a lot, but that made a big impact. I had intuition for it. In about three years I learned most of what I know now.

If I wasn't so lazy, or if I had a roadie, I'd have a line of guitars on stage. I'd have a lap steel and a nylon string up there, but who wants to keep up with all that?

Gibson ES 125 was a real instrument, this was in 1956. I started learning; I had a vision of a sound.

I saw all that [white trash] growing up in Alabama and Georgia. I had a group of country cousins and we'd go visit them when I was a kid. They lived on a red dirt Georgia back road, in a shack, with twelve kids. Farmers. No electricity, they had a well on their back porch, but they had nothing, yet they were the happiest, freest people I'd ever met. I loved to visit them. Great sense of humor, and they kept up with all the latest music, country, rockabilly, that stuff. Great food they grew in the fields and canned. Happy people.

I had a guy who went out of way to help me get started and somehow saw something in me. I couldn't get my hands on a real guitar till I was fourteen. I always wanted one from the time I was a tiny kid. Music was bigger than life to me.

Music saved my life a few times because I could play the stuff rednecks loved. They thought I was great and they wondered why I didn't do that all the time.

When was about 16 or 17, I was living in Beaumont, Texas and Carlos Montoya came to Lamar College. I went to see him and I didn't know what flamenco was. But when I saw him play, I was blown away that one man on one instrument could make all that sound. I'd learned a lot, but that made a big impact. I had intuition for it. In about three years I learned most of what I know now.