Yeah, I am a hick. I am naive, and I am sincere and it's wonderfully unfashionable.

The thing I fail to do is fully comprehend what's given back to me by the audience. You would think you would be a performer partly so you could feel all the appreciation or adulation, but I haven't quite managed that yet.

The thing I fail to do is fully comprehend what's given back to me by the audience. You would think you would be a performer partly so you could feel all the appreciation or adulation, but I haven't quite managed that yet.

I'm one of the few that comes from this vantage point: I never tried to get a record deal.

There is no one like him alive today, ... He was a vast treasure trove and storehouse of musical and cultural knowledge and the richness that he has brought into all of our lives is immeasurable. He was a generous spirit, overlooking faults in order to see the common humanity that we all share and this is the quality that I will miss the most. For a man who has seen some of the most repulsive and ugly aspects of human nature to transform that knowledge into the beauty and grace that he does is an uplift and hope for citizens of the world.

Writing and singing does give me some kind of release from the demons of my past, it is a therapy of sorts, but to be honest, my marriage played a more important role in the acceptance of myself than performance has ever done.