Also because people like to multitask in a way if you've got a bit of music on in the background and the lyrical content is making you want to listen to it then that would probably put you off the texting you wanted to do. I think people like things that just make that right kind of noise but leave your brain free to do something else.

I always knew I'd be in music in some sort of capacity. I didn't know if I'd be successful at it but I knew I'd be doing something in it. Maybe get a job in a record store. Maybe even play in a band. I never got into this to be a star.

Music's been around a long time and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record that's the frosting on the cake but music's the main meal.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

Half the time I feel like I'm appealing to the downer freaks out there. We start to play one downer record after another until I begin to get down myself. Give me something from 1960 or something let me get up again. The music of today is for downer freaks and I'm an upper.

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'

When people hear good music it makes them homesick for something they never had and never will have.

There's something missing in the music industry today... and it's music. Songs you hear don't last it's just product fed to you by the industry.

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate very simple and emotional about that music.

In our music in our everyday life there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?