Quotes

Someone said to me early on that you have to stay in touch with the love of doing it. It can't be about fame and money and all that. If you stay in touch with the joy and fulfillment, time and the world fall away, and there's nothing but the music. That will lead you where you need to go, and the rest will take care of itself. If you get rich and famous and hate the music, then you haven't done anything. That's a special kind of misery.

Music can help us communicate with each other. I can make an argument for thirty minutes that won't convince you, but I can sing you a song in three minutes that will change your heart. The arts knock on the brain from the back door. It makes us feel something first and then teaches us something. That's a vehicle for change. If I do my job right, it's like going on a journey and each song opens up a nuance of the journey, and the momentum keeps pulling you forward.

Unions help people, who may be in the position of having no power, to discover a power bigger than each individual. When people stand together anywhere in the name of what they have in common and in the name of dignity, there's a principle that starts to work through them, and that is the beauty of unions.

[on the song 'Black Lung'] I'm a trained singer; I've practiced for years. Contrast that with Hazel Dickens who wrote that song about her brother and doesn't have an ounce of training. It's a seamless connection from the emotion to what comes out of her mouth. I've been moved to tears by her version of the song. I had to not perform that song. That taught me how much I don't know about singing. That was the gift really of all this music. All of the songs were very simple but, for me, it was almost like there was a little wall deep down in me I had to push down and open up a level of vulnerability. It's really about honoring the stories. I had to strip away a layer of my own ego to do it.

[about singing coal mining songs set in her native West Virgina] I kind of thought maybe I didn't have the authority so sing these songs, but I felt drawn to do it. It was like going back and picking up a piece in your jigsaw puzzle that was missing and you didn't even know it was missing. My grandfathers were both coalminers. I thought coal mining was their story. I came to understand that I was heavily influenced by coal, even though nobody was coming home covered by coal dust in my house. So many of the little vignettes I grew up hearing got tied together in a larger narrative, and I began to see where I came from in a different way.