Where do I get my inspiration? Let’s start with Woody Guthrie.

Ever since I learned the true meaning behind this Land is Our Land, I’ve been obsessed with Woody Guthrie. I always assumed he was a patriotic songwriter, and in many ways he is. He just saw a different America than most. He wrote the song on the heels of another popular hymn, God Bless America, but he did so in protest. He witnessed Black Sunday of the great and terrible Dust Bowl. He rambled and traveled and saw the conditions of segregation and Jim Crow. He experienced the degradation of Oklahoma refugees in places like California. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote. A small man born in 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma changed the direction of music. Any songwriter that has made a statement about society, be it John Lennon, Bob Dylan, or Eddie Vedder, can trace their roots back to Woody Guthrie. I heard it said, while watching the movie at the Woody Guthrie museum, Woody is not a link in the chain of folk and rock, he’s the concrete anchor to which that chain is bound to the earth.

So yeah, he inspires my art.