I'm much more energetic now; you might say live performance is my mission.

But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony.

Even though I have often recorded alone, I still feel the best music is made by musicians playing off each other.

I don't know that all the demons have been beaten, but I'm very, very proud of those songs.

I stuck with that size because I could bend the strings so well, and somewhere along the line I must have gotten it into my mind that I had small hands, so I was thinking I'd never be able to play a full-scale guitar, but I also felt like I was cheating or cutting corners.

I thought what I was good at doing was playing real simple guitar licks, since I'd cut my teeth on what Duane Eddy was doing; licks that were simple but had staying power.

I went pretty much for one tone, and I knew at that time that I wanted to play a Rickenbacker.

I work hard at that, but the fact that there are a lot of good songs means there are also a lot of really bad songs I've written that you never hear.

I wrote that song for my wife, and it's what some guy who's sitting under a tree would be singing to the woman of his life, telling her how wonderful she is. To me, that's more lasting than something that sounds like it belongs on a movie soundtrack.

No, but I've always felt that with true talent, and a commitment to hard work, it is possible to achieve an enduring respect and appreciation. In other words, I don't take my fans for granted.

I'm like a twenty-two-year-old kid in a new band trying to get noticed and break through, because the vast majority of people have never seen me play live.

And I now think that Stratocasters and Telecasters are way cool.

There's just not a lot of guys around playing like that these days; a lot of steel players are plugging into stomp boxes, trying to sound like Jeff Beck on a steel guitar.

I'm now comfortable playing a lot of the old songs, and I've gotten out a lot of the old equipment.

Washburn's an old American name, but this one was assembled overseas.