Ever get sick of the Springsteen comparisons?
No, it's flattering. Springsteen came along at a time that was really difficult for singer/songwriters, but he was just so good that he broke through. I think he's the best out there. His body of work speaks for itself. And the way "Guitar Town" was written to be a record, with a beginning track and an end track, was the direct result of me seeing the "Born in the U.S.A." tour and listening to that album a lot. It's seen as the record where he became an icon in the commercial world, but it's his most political record. It was very misinterpreted at the time. I still think it's his best.
Who gave you your first guitar when you were 11?
My uncle, who is five years older than me. He was living with us at the time. I started to learn to play upside down because he's left-handed. Then he got a new guitar and he gave me his old one.
And then you split when you were 16?
I started to run away from home when I was 14. I feel bad because my parents were really great parents and they never did anything to me to make me want to run away.
By the time I was 16, the FAA was starting to computerize air-traffic control and they decided to retrain my dad for data systems so he had to go back to Oklahoma City to go to the academy. I had dropped out of school by that time and had a gig at night and a job building houses during the day. I didn't want to go to Oklahoma and they knew they couldn't make me go anywhere so they helped me find an apartment and we went and celebrated my birthday three months early because we always went to a Mexican restaurant for my birthdays and off they went.
My relationship with my parents improved immediately after I moved out of the house. I was hard to be around. My family is really close and the only time I haven't gotten along with my parents is between 14 and 16 and I think everyone can say that. And I was 14 in 1969, right at the peak of when everyone was not getting along with their parents.
How did you discover your love of Ireland?
Irish and Scottish music is such a huge part of country music so it was sort of natural. And Ireland is a place where I've done really well, so we've played there a lot, so that got me there.
I'd been hearing about Galway since the '80s and finally got there in the '90s and fell in love with every dog that had a bandanna around its neck and a Frisbee in its mouth. It's my kind of town. It's a university town and a tourist town. Artists have been living in the margins of places like that forever.
You're there a lot?
I go when I can and I try to stay three or four months at a time. I go when I'm finishing a project. I wrote most of "El Corazón" there, half of the book there, several of the songs that ended up on "Transcendental" were written there. If I hadn't fallen in love with a girl who has two small kids whose father lives in Tennessee, I'd probably be living there now.
You grew up outside San Antonio, but you were born in Virginia. Is it true that your grandfather sent soil from Texas to where you were born in Virginia so the first soil your feet would touch would be Texas soil?
It's true. My father sent dirt when my two boys were born. My granddad sent his youngest son -- he was 15 and had never been out of Jacksonville, Texas. He put the poor kid on a train to Virginia with a garbage can full of dirt. His instruction was that the dirt be under the fucking table when I was born. It took a great big arm and nose and mustache to keep that from happening. And they took a picture of that and I have pictures of it when my boys were born and my dad sent dirt.
It's funny about Texas. I'll always be a Texan because there's no cure for it. Probably if there was, I'd take it. There are a lot of things about Texas that really bother me and more each time I go back.
Like what?
The death penalty is the big one, but it's not just that. I think a good way of looking at it is that Texas has changed. As conservative as Texas is on some things, there was this odd time in the '70s when Willie Nelson moved back to Texas from Nashville and I stopped getting my ass kicked.
For a while I got my ass kicked because I wore cowboy boots and I had long hair. All of a sudden, Willie comes back and at first there was trouble because Willie would have a concert and hippies would show up. I once saw a bunch of guys dancing on the dance floor and a bunch of kids sitting there and one guy dancing was kicking at people and Willie stopped the show and said, "There's room for some to sit and some to dance." He just didn't put up with it.
Willie's genuinely serene. FarmAid works because Willie doesn't want to hear about it not working. Texas got to be a really, really cool place. But it only went so deep. And it went away again quickly.
I'll always be a Texan and I'll always be an American. I may not always live in the U.S., but I'll always be an American. The government can't decide whether I'm an American or not.
About the writer
Mark Miller is a writer in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has written for ESPN magazine, MTV.com and the Washington Post.
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