Distribution has really changed. You can make a record with a laptop in the morning and have it up on YouTube in the afternoon and be a star overnight.
I just play the music that I love with musicians that I respect, and fortunately, I’m in a position where people are willing to play with me, and perhaps I can do something to help them.
I don’t know that I’m unique in that people relate to my music, but I would hope people would say that I’m honest and that I do the best work I can possibly do instead of coasting.
I think that we have a unique opportunity as performers and artists to be kind of the town criers and also to get more people to listen, so that’s a blessing and a responsibility that I take very seriously.
I have been really heartened by how much coverage there has been about inequality of pay across the board, between the entertainment industry and almost every industry worldwide.
Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.
Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn’t mean that artists from the rock n’ roll/folk-roots culture – of which he was not really a part – shouldn’t get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.
The fact is that this conversation is going on at every level at every age, we’re all going, “God, what a jerk I’ve been,” “How could I have married that guy?” or “How could I have done this or that?” With time, this is the gift of being older, that you get to look back and say, “It wasn’t all about them.”
We did a two month tour with Taj Mahal that was really healing and cathartic and a good distraction after my brother passed away. Then I knew I wanted to take a year off, and it was really nice to have that chance to fall apart.
You know, a lot of people feel that sobriety is about just stopping using whatever it was that you appeared to be addicted to, but it really has to do with a way of looking at your life and taking accountability.
It can unite kids and musicians, everybody, whether they’re leftist or rightist, or radical, or Republican, because energy is energy. But in fact, it is a real political struggle – it shows people that it’s big business against the people.
Whatever role we were in our family of birth, we take on this persona and in your 20s and 30s in particular, you end up thinking that’s you and that isn’t necessarily you.
How I measure success is getting to make another record and being able to the come back to the same town and play again cause you sold out the last time.
