Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig – it’s not as hard as songwriting, that’s much more daunting – but I love playing other people’s music.

I don’t think there’s ever been any music quite like what we came up with.

A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it’s done right – like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there’s nothing better.

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...

I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.

What – of all the incredible duets that I’ve been able to sing, you know, John Raitt was still the one that I just shook in my boots just standing next to him. I loved...

I’m sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It’s just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters...

I finally learned to accept that I can’t make radio play blues any more than I could get Reagan out of the White House.

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music,...

I was offered to take over for Reba in ‘Annie Get Your Gun,’ but it wasn’t where I wanted to be. I think my fans would be upset if I confined my shows to one...

Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice – those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were...

I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.

Not being a natural songwriter… for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the...

I have a really full life, both within music and outside it.

‘I Will Not Be Broken’ has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event… it’s going to inform the richness that you sing from… The experiences of life make...

I’m certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who’ve ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how...

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

My love was Bob Dylan, but as I got older I realized a good ballad was a good ballad.

One of the biggest obstacles I’ve overcome in my life was thinking I didn’t deserve to be successful. Artistically I’m not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because...

I made my first album, and I guess it wasn’t a fluke, because now I’m on my 16th.

Religion is for those who are scared of hell, and spirituality is for those who have been there.

Nobody taught me to play bottleneck. I just saw it and taught myself. I got an old bottle and steamed the label off, put it on the wrong finger, I basically did everything wrong until...

I’m honored when young people say they’ve gone to school on slide guitar with my records. But people get their influence from my live shows and records and YouTube, not me personally. I walk around...

Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but...

Superficial pop will always exist – there’ve always been Fabians – but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there’s a revolution going on in music.

People say, ‘Gee, you don’t really do political music.’ Well, I sing a lot of songs about how men and women and lovers treat each other, and none of us want to be talked down...

I’m not that beautiful, and I don’t want to be a pop star.

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.

The anti-nuke movement has important and far-reaching implications for grassroots organizing. 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...

Sometimes I’m more true when I’m up onstage than I’m able to be in my regular life. It’s not as exciting to be at home, but I’ve got to learn how to make that work,...

I think I’m a living embodiment of, ‘Don’t try to push me around or squash me,’ whether its how I talk to a record label or in my relationships.

Sometimes I don’t go into the studio for quite a while because I haven’t found enough good songs. They have to have a certain caliber and connect with me because I’m going to be playing...

I do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder… So yeah, that’s pretty profound, when you’re not expecting it, you didn’t particularly believe in it and then...

It is still a surprise when people tell me that I’ve had an influence on them, particularly when it’s someone I really respect.

Solar power is the last energy resource that isn’t owned yet – nobody taxes the sun yet.

The world I live in is benefiting from things like satellite radio. Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I’m hearing is an appreciation of real...

There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late ’60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were...

I like to think I get better with age, but maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I’ve watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would happen with me.

I would rather feel things in extreme than not at all.

People come up to me all the time who saw Dad in ‘Oklahoma!’ or ‘Pajama Game,’ and they say they’ll never forget it.

I’ve been lucky enough that I can gather all sorts of experiences and find inspiration by traveling around and by spending time with people I admire.

I think it’s our job to write about what we’re going through at the moment, and being 41, I’m not going to write about the same things I wrote about at 20. I don’t think...

The fifth member of my band is my non-profit work.

AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ is the greatest meshing of vocal, guitar, and content I’ve ever heard. That’s what I aspire to.

The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.

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...

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. The talent on YouTube is incredible,...

The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.

Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we’re not...