What about your dad? How is your dad, anyway?

He's better. He's in the hospital now and I just got back from Nashville seeing him, but he's better today. He's going to be fine. He had another case of pneumonia.

Everyone seems to be getting it these days. I've had young friends with two-month bouts with pneumonia.

The whole world, it seems. I had a bronchitis/pneumonia last year. It's weird, isn't it? I think it's partly New York, what we were breathing in after 9/11.

What about having your dad on the record? You duet on "September When It Comes."

I did not intend that. I recorded the song by myself. And John said, "You should ask your dad to sing on this." I was really resistant at first. It was a knee-jerk reaction at first, because that's what I've always done in my career: I don't want to use my dad, I don't want to invite comparison. John said, "You have to look at the song. It's perfect for him." And it is. I'm so glad I waited for this song at this time.

Where did those lyrics come from?

Well, when he was first sick, and you get that first glimpse of your parents' mortality. It was inspired partly by that and partly by the knowledge that maybe you just get when you are older that not every question has an answer, that maybe some things you just need to close the door on and they will be unresolved forever. It's not necessarily bad; it's just the way it is.

Then there's "Closer Than I Appear." I love that song.

That's the oldest song on there. "I learned a lot of rules of what a man is made of ..." I thought I'd written it for a man to sing, but I couldn't get any men to sing it! So it just languished for years. It just wasn't working. We tried a lot of different arrangements and now I'm happy with it.

[Call waiting interrupts, briefly.] That was the guys at MoveOn.org, the antiwar group I'm a part of. People are getting beaten up for saying they oppose the war.

I've been wanting to ask you about this ...

I was talking to Janeane Garofalo the other day, and we're both concerned about poor Natalie Maines [of the Dixie Chicks]. What can we do to help this poor girl? I could not believe when I was in Nashville last week what they are doing to her: tractors running over the records, insisting that she go on TV to recant ...

And then she did go on to make some apology, which pissed me off!

I know, it pissed me off too, but I also understood it. Just don't say, "I was wrong." I think she's sort of out there alone and I think she's probably scared to death. I mean, I'm used to getting hate mail. [Laughs.] She's not.

It annoys me to no end when people think it's OK to express their own point of view, but someone with a different point of view shouldn't say it. Particularly if that person has the ability to get attention. Why, because someone is famous or accomplished, does that mean they can't have a point of view?

I just wrote a column for my Web site and I said, "Why can't teachers and plumbers and musicians all have an opinion?" The people who scream the loudest about the American way and freedom, they seem to be the least tolerant about different opinions.

We've gotten back to the war now, haven't we? So what are you doing about it?

What I'm doing now is having the courage of my convictions, which is to say I'm against it and to say why -- because I really think my grandchildren are going to be cleaning up this mess and I have to face them. I have to at least be able to say, "Well, I was against it." That's the way I was brought up. My dad opposed the Vietnam War; that was very unpopular. My dad took on the Ku Klux Klan. He never backed down. You know, ultimately I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror. If you don't have the courage to say what you believe, then what good are you?

As far as what active things we can do? At this point we're all a bit dispirited, but there's talk of a concert at Madison Square Garden in the next couple of weeks, to fund humanitarian aid.

Are you doing anything to promote the record now?

Talking to you. Talking to a few other guys. Not a lot until summer, when my little boy gets out of school. We're filling in the [tour] dates now. West Coast. England. It's fun in summer with all of these festivals outside.

What do your kids think of you?

[Laughs uncontrollably.] What a loaded question to ask a mother! Actually, my daughter Chelsea answers my fan mail. And she came across some really rabid hate mail. And she's not supposed to do this but she wrote one of them back and said, "If you ever talk to my mother like that again, I'll hunt you down." [Laughs.] She said, "I'm not peaceful like she is."

And I said, "Chelsea, oh my God, you shouldn't have done that. You didn't say you were going to kill him did you?" She said, "No, I just said I'd hunt him down."

She knows where to draw the line.

I have so much fun with my kids. They were such horrible, evil adolescents; I didn't think any of us were going to make it through it. But they've each turned into the most incredible women. Of course, the youngest aren't through it yet, so we'll see what happens with them.

There was a lyric on the record that made me think, "What would a kid think if it was their mother singing this?"

Was it "Next time a woman's on her knees, don't try to make a deal"? You know, they know I'm a writer, and they grew up with it, and they all think like artists. They're very broad-minded kids. I got permission from each of them to get arrested for civil disobedience if I have to in the next couple of weeks.

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