Everybody should have their own thing, and if he don't want to be a role model, that should be up to him. In the right situations, I can try to help and be a role model, but I'm still gonna speak my mind, and if that affects the role-model deal, then too bad.

Writing is not work. In fact, theres nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.

I want people raising my kid that see along the same lines of values and issues as I do.

I'm not the kind of man that holds out on a need for nothing. I'm as lonely as any man around, I just don't like to pick 'em up and lay 'em down.

There's a band of studio session - hot players - that play on my albums... They're an eclectic bunch of misfits that I've worked with for years and years.

My mom taught us the Serenity Prayer at a young age.

My first gig, I was about 17 or 18. But I'd been singing a long time. I got a guitar when I was 8, and started trying to write songs as a teenager.