When I was 6 I didn’t have nothing. I never saw a guitar, I didn’t know what it was. What I would do is go and strip the screen wire off the windows. You didn’t have air conditioning or no electric fan, and those mosquitoes in the Louisiana bayou are big enough to lift you out of the bed. So whenever she got 15 cents, my mama would buy a piece of screen wire and tack it up so you could open a window and get a breeze. I was always trying to stretch that wire tight enough to make a sound. If you put two nails in the wall [at either end of the wire] and get it tight enough, you can hear something.

From Performing Songwriter Issue 113, November 2008

Category: In Their Own Words