I always had a hard time with Nashville. I reluctantly live there. I've mellowed, and it's improved some, in the fact it has more immigrants. There's some real Mexicans there, some folks from India, some of this and that. I'm not satisfied at all with living there. It's a dilemma for me.

I heard black people sing and the emotion was overwhelming to me. The power of that with all the built in sorrow and joy was just overwhelming to me as a little kid. It was the real deal.

I was such a heavy drinker I was going to die at age 37. Not to mention the drugs. I'm glad to be sober, I haven't missed a thing. A lot of people never get the chance to come back.

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

I didn't have the self-promotion instinct, and I just didn't care about it. I sort of had a "beat" attitude.

The song [The White Trash Song] was not a put down of [ my country cousins ], but a celebration. I wrote that early on, as a teenager.

The end is here, and you don't want be here. You are the best in the world at something, and you know you are not going to be that great at anything else.