Rodney Crowell

At the end of the day, Johnny Cash was a poet.

I'm enough of a southeast Texas boy - there's enough white trash in my blood that when somebody gives me money to make a record, I feel like I have to please them instead of myself.

People ask me, 'What is the mystique of the Texas songwriter?' Well, we ran barefoot from March until November. I think there's something about being a barefoot kid that gets you closer to the place - you take root.

That young man that I was in 1988 - I was insecure. Besides making good music, I wanted to be cool; I wanted to be accepted and stuff.

Pretty much any artist that I know of that has found that mentor status, if they're generous and okay to bestow a bit of mentor-type information, it's do what you feel, not what you think.

I'm a vulnerable guy.

I don't make music for the radio. And when I was being played on the radio a lot, I didn't.

Violence was very much a part of my mother's upbringing - a little less so with my father's, but my father was an angry man when he was young. He was angry and frustrated and had no idea how to channel anger.

When you're younger, love is this magic thing where the heavens open up. You live 40 years past that, you realize sometimes the heavens close down.

My mother was apt to fall out on the floor and start speaking in tongues. Actually, it was a great performance... It was great theater. As a 5-year-old, I understood that, although it scared me and there was a little part of me going, 'I don't know about this. This seems over-the-top to me,' at the same time, I did understand that this was passion.

Collaboration allows me to challenge myself to find a new passion for music.

My preference for female company is based for the most part on the fact that women are more self-aware than men, in my experience.