If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that's pretty good.
I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness get all swirled up inside you.
Soon as I could play one guitar chord and laid my ear upon that wood, I was gone. My soul was sold. Music was everything from then on.
I take my own syrup, ketchup, and mustard, just in case of emergencies, in my suitcase. Whatever I can steal from the hotels. It's usually Heinz ketchup, and they give you a weird mustard. You don't get French's or anything; you get some sort of Dijon or some mustard. That's just for hot dogs. I don't use mustard for anything else.
I embraced loneliness as a kid. I know what loneliness is. When you're at the end of your rope. I never forget those feelings.
It was always difficult for me to listen to my singing voice for the first 20 years or so. I mean, I really enjoyed singing, and I enjoyed doing live shows, but being in a recording studio and having to hear my voice played back to me would really drive me up the wall.
My sense of humor has saved me more than a couple of times in my life.
I think if you write from your own gut, you'll come up with something interesting, whereas if you sit around guessing what people want, you end up with the kind of same schlock that everybody else has got.
I feel basically good about my career because it's remained constant. What I do has never been especially in vogue or gotten high on the charts. At the same time, I haven't had to stop performing any of my music because it aged in style.
I thought I was grounded. I thought from my kinda blue-collar outlook on life that I would call myself a grounded person. I was not. I was like a balloon flying around in the air. And as soon as our first child was born, boom - my feet came right down to the ground.
I started out in the folk music world only because of the way my songs were written and performed, with just an acoustic guitar, but I always related to the rock n' roll lifestyle.
When I turned 40, I invited Johnny Cash to my party, even though I knew there was gonna be 200 people roasting a pig and wild as can be. He didn't come, but the next day, I got a bowl of chili he'd made and a note that said, 'John, I'd love to come to your party, but that would mean I would have to leave my house.'
I'd rather get a hot dog or a doughnut than write a song.
I always had an affinity for older people. I had a job delivering newspapers, and one place I had to go was an old people's home. Some people would introduce you to their neighbors as if you were a nephew or grandson. They didn't get many visitors, so they acted like you were coming to see them. And that stuck with me for a long time.
There is a certain comedy and pathos to trouble and accidents. Like when a driver has parked his car crookedly and then wonders why he has the bad luck of being hit.
I sound like that old guy down the street that doesn't chase you out of his apple tree.
'The Ways of a Woman in Love' is one of my very favorite early Johnny Cash songs. I like the way the lyric talks about the character walking by the girl's house and wishing he was the one in her arms.
I had a year-round Christmas tree with nothing but colored vinyl 45s hanging on it, like, old Elvis records and stuff.
I was in the Army in the 1960s. I didn't go to Vietnam. I went to Germany, where I drank beer. But I did have an empathy with the soldiers in Vietnam.
I think the best duets are those where there's a dialogue back and forth, and then the two singers go into a thing together.
