Been watching a lot of interviews with folks living in the Appalachians, and I swear it teleports me right back into the woods of Missouri where I lived for several years. Same general attitudes, simplistic lifestyles, very limited access to jobs, and a ravage of drugs.

Also reminds me of Michigan where some uncles, cousins, and my grandmother live, out in the woods, isolated. Well actually, grandma lives in a very nice retirement community now, but she used to live in a little house on the forest border.

I used to play with the neighbor boy who came from a very broken home, had an abusive alcoholic dad, but he was really sweet and we'd always spend as much time together as possible whenever I was visiting family in Michigan as a kid.

It destroyed me when I found out later on when we were teenagers that a drunk driver wound up killing him in an accident, and his family was too poor to even pay for a headstone. I still think about him a lot.

I connect so much with Appalachian, Ozark, and general southern folklore, culture, etc. because I grew up always very aware of that breed of poverty, isolation, and hopelessness. These are forgotten, haunted places that are both beautiful and tragic.