Around the time the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, I was already in a band.
Be On Your Way is one of the favorite songs I've ever written. What a terribly sad song, but what a beautiful melody.
Coming out of college with a degree in fine arts and painting isn't worth much any more.
For those two years in college I was constantly singing and writing and playing in coffee houses and stuff.
Getting the best response from people is how I base my success.
I always try to give my songs as gifts.
I believe in God, but not in any rational or theological scope.
I choose to express myself.
I do what I believe in. I do good work, and the people who appreciate it, fine, and those who don't, fine, that's good.
I don't really pay enough attention to what other people are doing.
I feel it right down in my stomach when I'm in touch with something. I don't know what it is.
I fell in love with Nashville. I got lots of work.
I had gone full-on folkie; I'd had it with bands.
I had never done TV. I think it's a foolish medium for , most rock 'n roll music. Nobody ever comes off well on TV.
I hate the road so much. I almost go into a cocoon with my own people out there.
I have a very sedate life. How often do you see me at a bar in Boulder? I like Boulder. We just don't live that way.
I kinda threw the spotlight away from me for a little while.
I love Don Williams records, and old Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe.
I love home. I'll stay up there for days on end, I won't even go down the driveway to look for the mail.
I love the subtlety and tonal range of the acoustic guitar.
I love to laugh, it's my main thing. I love to abuse the English language.
I love to rock 'n roll. But my finest suit, of all the things I do, is as a songwriter.
I may quit the music business someday, but never the music.
I never going to satisfy everybody, so I decided to satisfy myself.
I put everything I can into a record. That's what art is for. I take a risk every time I do one with my whole being.
I wanted to pay tribute to my musical influences: Buffalo Springfield, Lightfoot, the Beatles, the Hollies.
I was blessed with a gift. It's a gift and a curse. It never ends.
I was playing in bands before high school even. My first band I was in at 14. And we were playing just Beatles.
I went to college as a theater major. But after about three weeks of that, I changed to the school of fine arts as a painter.
I wish I had more time to sit down and be a little bit more normal.
I wish I was a little more gregarious and outgoing.
I'm a child of the woods. I have that sort of sensibility.
I'm affected by my environment. Los Angeles makes me defensive and wary.
I'm not 20 years old any more. I'm not gonna go out on quite the limb I did.
I'm not the quiet sensitive little guy I was. I can't be. There's just too much after me.
I've always got about four albums in my head.
I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.
I've succeeded beyond what I ever thought I could.
If people are willing to buy it and listen to it and they like it and enjoy it, then it's viable.
If someone criticizes my child it's gonna hurt me a little bit, but it's my child, you know, and I love it regardless.
It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians.
It was either go on and work with a psychiatrist beside me or go home for a while.
It was quite a shot in the head to do the album and then have it shot down by nonmusical idiots.
It was so much fun playing simple American bluegrass. I got to meet Doc Watson.
It's 24 hours a day, every minute of the day in one way or another. Eventually that's gonna wear you out.
It's a very important issue to me, trying to wake people up to the fact that we'd better take better care of our planet.
It's just the transitoriness of this business; I don't think people take it seriously enough.
It's only an interim trip. I love the music, but it's really giving me a way in which I can comfortably explore my art.
Life isn't all that sad. I'm a happy person.
Longer is not my best song, it's just a classic love song, and every songwriter always dreams of writing a classic love song.
MTV didn't call. I guess I wasn't hip and groovy enough.
My dad was vehemently opposed to electric guitars. He did not look on that kind of music as legitimate in any way.
My grandfather gave me my first guitar, an old acoustic with palm trees and dancing girls painted on it.
My life is as an artist, not an entertainer. I don't consider myself an entertainer, but I can do that thing when I want to.
My upbringing made me think that real legitimate music is written, not heard.
Now is the only thing that exists.
People who listen to my records expect the ballads from me. The rock 'n roll is on there because it's another mode of expression.
Phoenix was a tougher record, a little more commercially accessible record.
Strats are my favorite electric guitars, and I've got quite a collection.
Tennessee helps me open up. I'm much more vulnerable there, more willing to talk about anything.
The dogs, and home, privacy is my constant.
The outlet for my sorrow, that I do feel deeply, and the pain, is the songs. That's where it goes.
The people who come to me are the people who are meant to come to me.
They get so much of me in that music. I don't feel I owe them anything else. I really don't. That's my privacy.
This isn't supposed to be the most commercially accessible product in the world. None of my projects have ever been.
To commit to a project this personal was pretty strange. It was a tough, tough project, but I'm very pleased with it.
To get the whole picture of this record, you have to listen to side one to side four.
When it goes to number 5 in the 3rd week, I couldn't really care what the critics say.
You can't do this business and be Mr. Nice Guy all the time.
You do get jaded when you do it for so many years.
You're successful if you can get one person to pick it up and put it on the turntable and go, Wow, thanks for writing that!
An avid downhill skier and sailor.
Has 2 older brothers, Marc, an attorney and Peter, a graphic artist.
Has a house on an island of the coast of Maine which he uses during the summer months.
His father was a bandleader. He inspired,"Leader of the Band" was released a year before he passed away in 1982.
In 1971, started pursuing music full time.
Started composing songs and was in his first band, "The Clan", at the age of 14.
By 16, he was through with his band, period. Spent a lot of time sitting on a bluff beside the Illnois River singing Gordon Lightfoot tunes. He was more interested in painting and did some theater in high school.
His mother, a Scottish immigrant, is a classcally-trained pianist.
Built a full recording studio known as "Mountain Bird Studio" (as in folgel = bird and berg = mountain) in the late 1980s, on his ranch, and skied during the day and worked at night.
Attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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