My whole thesis is that you can’t understand America until you understand Appalachia.

I found myself in the South. I got picked up by somebody and made a joke about how dangerous it is to hitchhike with hillbillies. He told me to get out.

To me the clash of that culture is the beauty of Appalachia.

America does need to come up to the mountains to deal with some issues.

It will be like an old-fashioned radio show. Appalachia is a crossroads of music, especially African-American. It’s beyond your imagination what came out of there.

It’s not just a backwoods of white, lanky mountaineers. In fact, it’s been much more of a crossroads of integration and coming together of many different cultures there.

We need to try to live in sync with our geography.

The whole point is why the mountains, the land, still determines our culture. The mountains sort of drive how we live.