When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth, which flow through his instrument.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

Whatever your standing in life, the most important thing is behaving in ways that help other people. It's the same with music. I am a servant of the music ... and if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything .. it'll burn and that's a guarantee.

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week.

Whether you are doing it in the bar, the church, the strip joint, or the Himalayas, the first duty of music is to complement and enhance life.

Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you've had a bunch of bad days and there's different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.