I think any young person who is going into the same field as their parent whose parent has been very successful, it's complicated.And it was complicated for me.
There's always that moment when you realize what it's going to be. You might have an overarching theme and you need to fill in the blanks - and then there's this "Aha" moment when you see where it's going. That's the most satisfying part of writing.
I couldn't listen to music with lyrics for the first few months after the brain surgery, because they were too complex and disturbing. So I listened to a lot of classical music. I didn't really want to read, either, so I listened to books on tape or watched movies. I also re-taught myself all of my childhood piano pieces. It helped me repair my brain.
Sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins.
For the first time in 23 years I'm enjoying the process of supporting it, of going out and doing shows, and doing the interviews, and doing everything.
I'm not the type to turn to drugs and alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music - and children.
I was a songwriter; that was the torch I carried. This is an honorable profession. This is what I do.
Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn't mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn't even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what's happening.
I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.
Sarah Palin is a great example of someone that just stirs the pot for the sake of the attention. No vision, no critical thinking, no backup to her statements. Just to incite little riots everywhere and capitalize upon it financially. To me, she is a microcosm of the ultimate cynicism in American politics.
My dad and I had a real meeting of the minds. We loved to talk about music, politics, and art. He loved children. The thing I missed most about my dad when he died was that this person who really gets who I am at the core was gone.
I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.
But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.
Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.
As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.
No, my step-daughter just opened a theatre school for children, I have another daughter who works in the record industry and another who is going back to collage and I have two little ones at home.
I spent nearly two hours deciding on an outfit that would look as if the subject of clothing had never crossed my mind, but would in fact show off my best features and miraculously hide the extra pounds.
I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.
Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.
The new record started out being about loss, but it's morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.
If you're playing in a tradition and you have no reference point to it, no understanding and have not studied it, I can't respect that.
I was down with Lucinda Williams and Mary Chapin-Carpenter. We did an acoustic tour, just the three of us, three chicks and three guitars
I have learned to be steady in my course of love, or fear, or loneliness, rather than impulsive in its wasting, either lyrically or emotionally.
I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.
Think about all of the families where the father is a doctor and the son is a doctor or generations of coal miners. Why did they go into that line of work? Because that's what they were taught. Or was it in their genes? It's not an either/or question. It's both. I was inclined in that way. I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.
