“You have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the Blues.”

I watched Elvis Presley become – I listened to Elvis Presley. I watched Chuck Berry become. I listened to Little Richard.

My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time.

I heard that music, and it was part of my upbringing.

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.

It’s not written in the Constitution or anything else….

So my wife’s experience is just like that of anybody else whose husband goes away to a blue collar job and comes home bruised and dirty and often proud of the work that they’re doing.

I’m a doofus from the Valley, a blue-collar guy.

I’d like to be a geneticist to be honest, but there are limits to what I can do now. For my dream to come true I’d have to be 20 years old again, heading off to a blue chip university.

That leaves me with a twisted view of the whole wide world as I know it… And I guess I got no choice but to be a poet.

They asked me, How did you learn to sing the blues like that? How did you learn to sing that heavy? I just opened my mouth and that’s what I sounded like.

People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.