We live in an increasingly sophisticated world that makes it difficult to make simple comments on stuff. There are too many people on both sides of the border who are taking advantage of circumstances and the situation.
I don't do anything on stage that allows me to become a trained seal, where you're just doing the same thing over and over.
My mother had introduced me to a lot of my father's friends because she believed that I would get to know the guy my dad was better through his friends than just in the hospital visits.
My dad's songs were really written to make certain people feel as though they had some kind of value. Because they were told from where they work and from the countries they had immigrated from that they did not.
With the advent of radio and recording, music became an industry rather than just a tradition.
Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that's why garage bands started springing up everywhere.
Thank God that the people that run this world are not smart enough to keep running it forever. You know, everybody gets a handle on it for a little while.
If you do anything for 40 years, you can do it comfortably. And it will always be good. But unless you're willing to risk it being bad, it can never be great.
I'm not just a singer-songwriter doing songs in the key of me.
I left the entertainment industry part of my life behind in 1983, when we decided not to work with major record companies anymore.
Everywhere I go, I see all kinds of people at my shows - conservatives, liberals, new-agers, teen-agers, old pensioners. And for those people to have something in common is real interesting to me.
Along with a sense of humor, my songs have to be sincere, and they have to be sung from a position of inner conviction.
I've written quite a variety of songs, everything from kids songs to political satire, and my dad covered a fairly large range, also.
Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.
