Fame & Fortune: Jesse Winchester American music's most identifiable draft-dodger
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I'd gone to Canada assuming I would never be able to go back, that was part of the deal, so I just accepted the deal and never really fought against it. I know a lot of other people in my position were lobbying very hard for amnesty, but I always kind of disapproved of that because I thought, somehow you can't have it all. There's a price to be paid for things like that and that seemed a fair price to me. I never worried about touring in the states. It just never occurred to me that that was a possibility. It was all gravy as far as I was concerned. I never thought I would make a record anyway, it just never occurred to me. I wanted to be Steve Cropper, the backup guy.

Bankrate: Did you consciously write about missing the South or did those themes just emerge in your early songs?

Winchester: It all comes out of me subconsciously. I'm not able to read the newspaper about something that happened and go hmmm, I think I'll write a song about that. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have to wait for this idea to pop into my head from who knows where. It's all subconscious.

Bankrate: Although you made a life, with a home and family, in Montreal, you never lost your accent, so to speak. As you say in "Nothing But a Breeze," "Me, I want to live with my feet in Dixie and my head in the cool blue North."

Winchester: It seems like I've always stayed Southern in a cultural way. There's just nothing better to me than cornbread and barbecue. I love Southern cooking, I love country music and the blues, and I always will. That's just who I am culturally. And yet on the other hand, mentally I felt very much at home in the North. I like the way people in the North leave you alone. I think sometimes that the North is the brain and the South is the heart. I took to the North pretty well. I like it.

Bankrate: You didn't rush back to the states after Jimmy Carter granted amnesty.

Winchester: No, by that time, I had my family and I was happy in Montreal. Then, after my family grew up and I divorced, I still stayed there because I was just happy there. It was home. I never thought about moving back until I met Cindy in 2002 and just fell in love. It just so happened that she lived in Memphis; it was sheer coincidence. That was what brought me back to the states. She was the friend of my high school sweetheart, and she introduced us. A bit of a soap opera there. My high school sweetheart got very, very sick and I kind of got reacquainted with her to try to cheer her up and that's how I met Cindy, through that.