As John Adams said, all democracies will eventually self-destruct. We seem to be doing it very quickly.
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.
With time the unbearable becomes shocking, becomes sad, and finally becomes poignant.
I dream of songs. I dream they fall down through the centuries, from my distant ancestors, and come to me. I dream of lullabies and sea shanties and keening cries and rhythms and stories and backbeats.
The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most – it’s a monk’s sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.
The religion I have is music. Even the times I have headaches, when I’m singing, I can’t feel them. My dad used to say that, too, especially near the end of his life. He would be in pain – a lot of pain – and he said the only time when he didn’t feel pain was when he performed and sang.
It’s a little dangerous for me to get outside myself and think about how I want people to see me.
I love mixing up my genres.
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.
I do not believe in terrorism, violence, destruction, murder, pre-emption, or War.
The thing that scares me most is the shift from serving the people to exercising power and with it, this attendant narcissism. Sarah Palin is a great example of someone that just stirs the pot for the sake of the attention.
I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn’t sing.
We are creating a culture where content creators are a new servant class, and paid as such.
War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves.
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.
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.
My record label is treating me like I’m a new artist, which is exciting after all this time.
If I ignore my work, I start having anxiety attacks.
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.