“I did a concert at five years old in the garden of one of the church members, and we raised some money to buy a new piano in our little church.”

I can sing some polkas. And proud of that.

So given those things yes, I’m introducing some new music that people haven’t really heard me do in quite this fashion.

Until my knee said, “Uh-uh,” I was jogging. Then I started walking. They don’t like walking a lot, but I’ll push them.

A very few minutes, because seven days later I was in the studio, and eight days later, I was no the stage.

You really have to count your blessings and you have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the blues.

My dad graduated seminary there, and so did (sounds like) Mark Kimball’s grandfather. They sang in a quartet together, my dad and Mark Kimball’s grandfather.

The ones that you sing when you’re driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.

A couple of incidents of shortness of breath and checked myself into a hospital, but that one in France really sat me down for a few minutes.

Let that get you up in the morning and put the light in your eyes. I’m telling you, it makes you a better husband, mother, father, neighbor, citizen.

I discovered is that I have a couple of valves that were leaky and had been giving, gave me a problem then. But I hadn’t noticed anything up until then.

Every day is Thanksgiving for me, man. Yeah, I still have an audience, and they ask the local promoter, “When is Al coming back?”

It’s all background experience and listening and exposure.

I would still be singing, because it’s part of my heart and my soul, and it lifts me up.

and I was listening. I started singing, warmer than a summer night, at seven or eight years old.

These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I’m washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles.

Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it’s not easy. You have to take direct steps.

Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse.

The doors of churches, hotels, concert halls and reading rooms are alike closed against the Negro as a man, but every place is open to him as a servant.

Sailors ought never to go to church. They ought to go to hell, where it is much more comfortable.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

I don’t really get to attend church. That’s definitely one of the challenges.