If I feel like things are getting into a routine, I want them to be different. I need to keep improving and keep moving forward.

Doing the acoustic at Carnegie is basically advised because electric music tends to get, let's just say, acoustically unsound.

A guitar is so tactile, and when you're playing bends - and bending notes is a big part of my style - there are so many notes within the note you're bending from and the note you're bending up to.

Everything Paul Kossoff did came from his fingers and went right into the amp. He was his own effects unit.

I was thrust into an adult world very quickly, and that can make anyone somewhat socially maladjusted to dealing with people your own age. But I wouldn't trade any of it.

I think great music sells records, and I also think, do you want to be a reality star, or someone that actually has credibility? Because you can't have both.

When you're 12 and, you know, slightly overweight and - for lack of a better word - white, and you're playing blues, you get a lot of press.

There's great cars, and then there's Aston Martins. Same thing for the 1959 Les Paul - it's an authentic piece of art that can never truly be replicated, and its mysteries are special.

I'm an acoustic guitar owner - in the sense that I own them, and they sit at my house, and I never play them.

I went through a period in my life where I didn't have money to buy ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly, but I also needed to go to the guitar store and buy strings and picks and polish and rags. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't play guitar.

The thing people forget about Kevin Shirley a lot of the time is that he's not only a great producer, he's also a world-class engineer. He really knows how to get a sound.

Sometimes you have to blame yourself before you can blame others.

There's always talk about the blues dying out, but it won't.

I'm not sure when I first heard about Beth Hart. I do remember seeing her on various TV shows. I think I'd seen her on 'Conan O'Brien' or whatever. And it seemed that whenever we'd tour Europe, our paths would cross.

I used to watch MTV when they played music, and discovered Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey.

You often see lifestyle over substance in L.A. Some rock stars dress up like they're going to play a gig when they're just going to the 7-Eleven store on a Tuesday night.

I never had this ego where I must write everything. I'm not Bob Dylan.

The blues, the way it's interpreted, is always a product of your environment, and so it's almost like food. You know, it's like you use the ingredients, and you use your life experiences that you have.

I don't have any legato skills; I could never figure out how to roll the notes off.

As far as actual playing, Clapton - by far - is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

The first thing you realise very quickly when you decide to do an acoustic version of an electric song is your solo either becomes either very truncated, very different, or non-existent, because even if you play a clean solo, it's different with the Kryptonite... with the acoustic.

If we got into a time machine and went back to the 1700s, classical and baroque music would have been the equivalent of Beyonce and Jay-Z.

I don't really do scales... I mean, I play parts of them, but then I bail and start playing parts of other things. The term 'scale' feels very scripted to me because I'm an improv player.

It's good to see young kids getting into the blues.

When I write for an album, I'll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.

If I'm soloing, I usually try to start with a theme, which will often stem from the blues.

At the end of the day, you really want to make sure that organic music, made by human beings, at least has a voice.

I've been lucky and very fortunate over the course of my career, and I try to do something good for people every day.

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.

The fact that I tour religiously in the spring, religiously in the fall, and do 125 shows - you can set your watch to that. And you could have set your watch to that in 2000 or 1999, and you can set your watch to it in 2012.

Jimi Hendrix is a classic example of a player in which everything he did, it was all in his hands.

I'm a kooky collector and own a couple of hundred guitars.

Who's to say a blues man can't play rock and roll?

I've really gotten over pedals. I can't keep up with this craze of boutique pedals that make you sound like everything but your guitar. I can't get my head around it.

It's not enough to play a song: you have to inhabit it.

I am the poster boy for brick-by-brick foundation building. Play a club. Put on a good show for 35 people. Come back. Build your market. Have people talk about you.

Nothing I'm doing musically is revolutionary in any way, shape, or form.

One of these days, when I get tired of it all, I'll keep six guitars and the amps I'm using, and I'll have a big old auction for charity.

I'm not one of those people that has to share personal experiences. That's not really the kind of writer I am. I'm a very private person to begin with.

I like to be in the room with players that are better than me. That's always a good place to be.

When you've done so many records in 20 years like I have, you're going to have ebbs and flows and go through peaks and valleys.

Being a niche kind of artist, you're not going to make a lot of friends in the traditional music biz.

My first memory of guitar was seeing my father play one.

My first proper 'Here's your guitar, Joseph' was a 1981 Chiquita, one of those Erlewine travel guitars. And it was good for a four-year-old because it was small.

At the end of the day, I think having some life experience is helpful to play any kind of music.

There's a certain thing when you start getting into your late thirties or early forties where you stop caring. Not to the extent where you stop caring about the music, you just stop caring about what anyone thinks of you, and you just kind of let it go - let the chips fall where they may.

British blues was my favorite music, and it still is.

I'm actually much more of a rock player than many people think.

Whenever I hear my playing, I can't detach from my influences: there's my Jeff Beck, there's the Clapton bit, the Eric Johnson bit, the Birelli Lagrene bit, the Billy Gibbons.

I'm probably a more intentional acoustic player than I am an electric player because of lack of influences. I just play acoustic to see what happens.