My Record Label Is Treating

I Needed To Carve Out My Own Place And Find Out What I Was Going To Do

I Don't Do Comparisons Because I Always Lose.

As I Started Writing About Loss And Grief, I Was Taking What Felt Unmanageable And Using My Songwriting, My Sense Of Poetry And Discipline, To Try And Make It Manageable.

My Dad [johnny Cash] Went To The [richard] Nixon White House And Refused To Sing "welfare Cadillac" (instead Performing The Anti-war Songs "the Ballad Of Ira Hayes" And "man In Black"). He Protested The Vietnam War, But He Went To Perform For The Troops With Bombs Dropping All Around Him. He Had That Kind Of Genius: A True Artist's Capacity For Holding Two Opposing Thoughts At Once While Being Large Enough To Encompass All Realities.

If You're Playing In A Tradition And You Have No Reference Point To It, No Understanding And Have Not Studied It, I Can't Respect That.