Q: You said you play guitar and work on the farm. What else do you do?
A: When I’m not working on the farm or playing the guitars I read. I love reading. Words fascinate me. You can make a straight line from a word to a thing. It vibrates between the thing and the word when you strum it. What you think when you’re reading it is the key the word is in. There’s got to be a key for everything. I started reading when I was three. Reading the newspaper on my grandmother’s knee. The songs get better as the words go along. When you strum the strings they sing. The songs come from the connection. I was in the bus station and saw you could get a ticket from A to Z but they told me it was Arizona and I didn’t want to go there because it was dusty. I still want to go the whole way.
Q: Besides learning to read at an early age was there anything else noteworthy about your childhood?
A: My childhood started when I was born. That was in a bean field because that was where my mother was at, about five miles east of Marked Tree, Arkansas. Marked Tree is unique because there is no place like it. Nowhere else in the world is named Marked Tree.
More Inerview>>>