I got three other guys to play with me, got on a bus, and started playing folk clubs and dives. A lot of times the reception was semi-hostile, like ‘What are you doing here? You’re...

A critic can call any poem ‘doggerel.’ That is no more than a slur. ‘Doggerel’ or ‘maudlin’ or ‘sappy’ or ‘sentimental’ is in the ear of the listener. By the by, ‘sentimental’ is okay as...

You probably only got three nuts on this plant that will grade. You’ve only got three nuts. Where here you’ve got a dozen or better. This makes a tremendous difference.

I don’t know whether I would or whether I could,

That’s what tomato spotted wilt virus does to one.

Twilight of the Renegades

The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs.

We as songwriters are in the same position as a professional fisherman. Our fishing grounds are kind of fished out.

what I’ve heard from my friends south of here, they are off three to five hundred pounds. We like a grade running 74 to 76, and they are running 68 to 70.

We’re going to have some dead plants. That dead plant really hurts your yield, and I see a little more than I would like. But we don’t have anything to combat it right now.

I think the individual writers are out there punching away but the market is not there. The Top 40 as we knew it was a kind of open forum where people could come and sing...

You reach a certain point in your life where they things you do and say do make a difference.

I started out quite instinctively, mainly imitating songs that I heard on the radio and then the follow-up six or so months later. It was really quite an education to hear another song crafted pretty...

The creative processes are so mysterious.

We are trying to describe the indescribable. It’s impossible, but I’m going to try it anyway, and take what you can from it.