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.

I will be a missionary in a remote village at some point.

One of the things that benefited me that anyone can learn is classical technique. That shows the orchestra that exists within the instrument.

I was always drawn to the roots music, bluegrass, blues, early rock - Sun Records, Elvis [Presley]. And I still love that music to this day. Memphis never gets the credit. It's much more musically rich than Nashville ever will be. Nashville manufactured that hokey-hillbilly image way back.

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.

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 notice guys playing the piano playing a part up here and a part down there, and I wandered why couldn't I do that on the guitar?