Tupelo Honey

But playing music isn't work for Tweedy, and he's got an unaffected nature that allows him to work relatively quickly under pressurized circumstances. He says that the idea of making songs from Guthrie's lyrics was not in the least bit daunting, adding, "If anything, it was titillating, to think how purists would be affected."

As important as music remains to him, it no longer seems to dominate his every thought, as it once did. At the time of Being There, Tweedy confronted the scary question of what he would do if music lost its importance to him. The answer he reached was strangely comforting.

"I think the only revelation I made is that it does go away, and that there's nothing you can do about it," he says. "But to worry about it and fear it going away makes it happen more often. Be unconditional about it, and realize that it's kind of a constant. And if it goes away, it's not the end of the world. You're still a person, and that's all right. But right now I'm feeling really good.