I'm always looking for something new to do.

I play acoustic when I need to play acoustic, and I say I'm probably a better acoustic player than I am electric.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.