I'm trying to look at my blessings and how amazingly well against all odds things have turned out for me.
I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.
I am myself for a living. I don't animate a character.
It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical. But it's what everyone wants - to get everyone's attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way.
It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical.
Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have made a lot of difference to my audience that I'm as bald as a billiard ball!
I collect hats. That's what you do when you're bald.
I find it a lot healthier for me to be someplace where I can go outside in my bare feet.
I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.
It is a process of discovery. It's being quiet enough and undisturbed enough for a period of time so that the songs can begin to sort of peek out, and you begin to have emotional experiences in a musical way.
Sobering up was responsible for breaking up my marriage. That's what it couldn't stand.
I played the cello from when I was ten, and then I bought a guitar from the father of some friends of mine and played that for a while. And then when I was fourteen or so, I bought a guitar - a real nice one - in Durham, North Carolina, that I worked with up until I was about twenty-five.
It's hard to find a way forward. When you're 18 it happens in huge chunks every day, but after 20 years, growth is much more costly.
When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.
I can take criticisms but not compliments.
I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.
I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.
One of my earliest memories was me singing 'Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' at the top of my voice when I was seven. I got totally carried away. My grandmother, Sarah, was in the next room. I didn't even realise she was there. I was terribly embarrassed.
Bruce Springsteen's a rock star. Elton John is a rock star. I'm a folk musician. Honestly, I think that's true.
A concert is always like a feast day to me.
