Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.
If something bothers me, it bothers me for a long time until I find a way to work it out. Music provided me with a means of working things out.
We got CEOs making 200 times the worker's pay, but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage.
This is how it has been since time began: If you want to make something really worthwhile and true, then you have to suffer for it.
I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.
And I've been walking 'round with memories way too long.
For a long time I was interested in being a social worker. In a lot of ways I feel that that's all my music is, trying to help people.
I honestly don't listen to a lot of music - I spend so much time working at my own music.
I've always been aware of having feelings that were pretty intense at times. I imagine most people have had that, or they wouldn't be human.
I don't describe myself as a Christian or religious, but I like to think that how I live my life is honest.
I don't know what other people are like, I haven't been able to crawl inside anybody else.
Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.
I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.
I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.
Some guy refuses to fight and we call that the sin, but he's standing up for what he believes in and that seems pretty damned American to me.
Making the record was tons of fun, the most fun I've ever had.
Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.
Turn off the TV and start digging around for information that's not from a corporation trying to make money.
My guitar is really tempermental. I don't give up on it though, I'm close to my guitar!
