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.

If I was an actor, it would be like a part that was me. It has to be real to me. I have to make it mine. I really enjoy taking a song I feel that way about, and sometimes it can take a long time to come up with just the right touch. I think that's really my greatest talent, interpreting.

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.

I was made to go to church and I heard the gospel songs, and every now then somebody would come through with a guitar and that was a thrill!

I grew up wanting a guitar, my family was very poor. When I was fourteen my mother bought me a Gibson ES 125 thin body. That was a bunch of money in those days - $125.00.

The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.

Josh Graves laid down the dobro on that song [The White Trash Song] and he was hot. We went on the road together and we'd get drunker'n hell every night! I haven't had a drink since November, 1979. And I like it.