Music makes you feel a feeling, and a poem makes you think a thought; a song makes you feel a thought.

E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, lyricist for “Over The Rainbow” and many other great standards

Some of my earliest song impressions came from my father, who was a builder and an artist. He didn’t talk much when he was working, so you never really knew what he was thinking apart from paying attention to what he was doing. Although he didn’t have much to say, he whistled a lot and sometimes he would come out with some funny line from a song out of nowhere. These tunes seemed to be a barometer of his thoughts. Some of those lines are cemented in my head to this day, and they always remind me of the awesome power that a simple song can have.

The songs that stick to my ribs are those that exist at the crossroads of blues, jazz, swing, country, bluegrass, and rock ‘n’ roll. All these genres reflect our American roots.