Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.

We have power not just with our voices, but we have economic power in what we do for a living, too.

I came late to the genre of folk music.

I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders.

Poverty is curable, but it’s just not done, because it's not profitable. And that is the kind of violence that's perpetuated on humanity.

A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs.

My take is that there's two ways to approach history. You sit in your armchair and you watch it on the news and you return to your PlayStation. Or you get out in the streets and you make it. Like, when those Supreme Court justices, you know, legalize desegregation, it wasn't due to their infinite wisdom. It's because people whose names you do not read about in history books, people whose faces you will never see, were the ones who struggled and sacrificed, sometimes gave their lives, to make this country a more equal one. When, it's like those people don't make history, it's us.