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 don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from.
There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.
Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours.
