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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.