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 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 was known to spout off about [ politics and religion] sometimes, especially in my drinkin' days! It was pretty dangerous actually.

In medieval times, artists had patrons that supported them and this is a similar thing, ... We're basically saying, 'Wouldn't you like to be a part of this'

I had admired Waylon [ Jennings], but I never expected to meet him and get to know him. When I finally moved to Nashville years later, one night I went to a Harlan Howard Guitar Pull thing, and there was Waylon. He started talking about how much he loved my work and how great I was, and I couldn't even get a word in.

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?

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.