I’m certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who’ve ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids.
Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.
My love was Bob Dylan, but as I got older I realized a good ballad was a good ballad.
How I measure success is getting to make another record and being able to the come back to the same town and play again cause you sold out the last time.
I’m honored when young people say they’ve gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around with a hat on. People don’t know it’s me.
Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste.
I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.
My career is based on the slow build of an audience based on putting on a good show live and putting out a record every couple of years. I was already doing really well in terms of my goals, to keep my fans coming back.
The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.
Nobody went out to pasture, and a lot of people are doing their best work. Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Sting are at the top of their game. I mean, Tony Bennett is the coolest guy I ever met! We have to figure out how to break out of this age ghetto.
I would rather feel things in extreme than not at all.
When you love a song so much you have to sing, you know how you feel – it releases something in you that resonates as true, whether it’s James Brown or Joni Mitchell.
There’s nothing like living a long time to create a depth and soulfulness in your music.
One of the biggest obstacles I’ve overcome in my life was thinking I didn’t deserve to be successful. Artistically I’m not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I’m not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.
Some people are caricatures of themselves, and some people keep people coming back and keep themselves growing. Otherwise, the fans would get bored.