And you can't get away from a mirror if you stand in front of it all the time, right. But if you step away from it, you don't notice it any more. And that's what the stage is like for me. See, an image becomes meaningless in as much as it's always temporary.

My songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way ... they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio.

Did He give me the gift of love to say who I could choose? When God made me did He give me the gift of voice so some could silence me? Did he give me the gift of vision not knowing what I might see? Did he give me the gift of compassion to help my fellow man?

I see country music, I see people who take care of their own. You've got 75 year-old guys on the road. That's what I was put here to do, y'know, so I wanna make sure I surround myself with people who are gonna take care of me. 'Cause I'm in it for the long run.

There is a town in north Ontario, With dream comfort memory to spare, And in my mind I still need a place to go, All my changes were there. Blue, blue windows behind the stars, Yellow moon on the rise, Big birds flying across the sky, Throwing shadows on our eyes.

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming We're finally on our own This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in Ohio Gotta get down to it Soldiers are gunning us down Should have been done long ago What if you knew her and Found her dead on the ground How can you run when you know

In my life I have had various health threats: polio, seizures, a brain aneurysm. None of these things has really changed me much, although it is hard to say for sure. These are events that are part of my life. They make me who I am. I am thankful for them. They are scary.

Now I'm at a point where I decided I'm going to be in the studio for a while, at least until I finish this record I'm working on now. I should have two, three, four of the sessions that I had that were similar to the sessions for Peace Trail before I have a complete record.

My life is not a political campaign. I just write about what is on my mind. I just play whatever I feel like playing. Whatever is in my soul at the time is what I want to do. I have, thank god, enough people who are still interested in what I am doing so that I can go out and keep doing it.

It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. [...] That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the '70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the '80s, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the '90s. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

Five hundred years later we're still doing it. This is a moment where we're either going to reaffirm that's what we do [with Native Americans ], that's who we are, or we're going to start moving toward change. A change won't come easy, because there's a lot of big money that doesn't care about any of this.

When you're young, you don't have any experience - you're charged up, but you're out of control. And if you're old and you're not charged up, then all you have is memories. But if you're charged and stimulated by what's going on around you, and you also have experience, you know what to appreciate and what to pass by.

Keep it moving. Don't hoard. Money's no good, get rid of it. Turn it into people doing things. Turn it into jobs. Turn it into happiness...The more people I employ, the happier I am - that means my money's goin' into other people's lives, and if I can give 'em something to create that they can be happy with, that's great.

The music world has taken a huge dump, so maybe there's a connection. So if Apple decided to do this, maybe they do their own version ... whatever they want to do it's a home run for music. Unless they screw it up, and try to put something on it so that they can own it - I'm calling it out, proprietary formats are not a good thing.

All the things I used to count on to get my music out there - record companies, they're all gone. And radio stations, they're gone - they're completely controlled by the government. If they're not controlled by the government, they're controlled by a programmer who's controlled by the government. Mainstream radio is suspect. You can't trust it.

A lot of people that buy vinyl today don’t realise that they’re listening to CD masters on vinyl and that’s because the record companies have figured out that people want vinyl, And they're only making CD masters in digital, so all the new products that come out on vinyl are actually CDs on vinyl, which is really nothing but a fashion statement.

I have a lot faith in the younger generation of music lovers. Youth isn't living in the past; if somebody tells them that there's something better than what they have, they're going to check it out. And if they like it, they're going to get it. I'm not worried about the youth. Young people aren't just looking back, they are also looking forward.

The artists always reflect the times, so there's a lot to think about, a lot of unknowns, a lot of things that are describable. This is the closest I've seen to the kind of ambience that made the '60s happen. It's not about the artist having a responsibility to do anything. They have to be artists and express themselves and everything will work out fine.

Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar, Dancing on the light from star to star. Far across the moonbeam I know that's who you are, I saw your brown eyes turning once to fire. I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream, You could have been anyone to me. Before that moment you touched my lips That perfect feeling when time just slips Away between us on our foggy trip.

It's a robust time, probably the most fertile time for the underground and for revolution since Nixon. I'm not talking about political overthrow; I'm talking about just general cultural revolution. Bush has polarised the country and is creating this breeding ground for an opposition. In the next couple of months, they'll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It's pretty crazy.

We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art. The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.

Pearl Jam is a band I have a lot of respect for. Nirvana and Sonic Youth I feel the same way about. Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, Givers, and Foo Fighters are just some of my favorites. I respect bands that give me something of themselves that I can feel. ("Posing" bands turn me off generally speaking.) It all has to do with a feeling I have about them. That is what music is to me, a feeling. It's similar with people too.

I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record ["Peace Trail"].

I would play all the parts of the song, show them the way it went together. Then I'd basically break down an arrangement - I wouldn't plan endings or beginnings - so they knew everything that was going on. I had the lyrics on a prompter so that I could remember everything I'd written, and I was able to just get into the groove and play with them. I think "Peace Trail" is one of the exceptions, where it's a later take. It just happened really quickly.

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