To join Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys was like throwing a baseball around in your front yard and somebody coming over and signing you to play for the New York Yankees.

When I get asked for advice for a young person starting in the music business, I tell them, 'Play every chance you get, and be real lucky.'

I asked the man on the phone from the National Endowment for the Arts what this fellowship entailed, and he said, 'Well, first there's $10,000.' I asked him, 'Can I pay it in installments?'

When the doctors showed me an X-ray of my brain, they pointed to a black hole on the upper left side and told me that all memory from that spot was dead. I thought to myself that I hoped that's where I kept 'The Orange Blossom Special.'