“When we were kids growing up, there were a lot of people playing around my dad all the time and some of those people were Ramblin' Jack Elliott, The Dillards, Hoyt Axton and Pete Seeger, of course, but those were all people in our lives who were family,” says Guthrie. “They influenced me as a human, and then their music was just around, all the time…. That was just the soundtrack to us growing up.”

“You learn a lot of lessons along the way when you’re out there trying to navigate your life.”

“The two questions I got when I returned [were], ‘Are you going to run for office?’ and ‘Are you going to play music?’ And so the answers were easy: no and yes.”

I just want to keep playing music the rest of my life. My Grandpa and Aunt Bobbie have been playin’ on the road for over 45 years together. It’s all I’ve known that they do. They just go out and play songs and they call it work.

“Florida is the strangest state. It’s the butt of everyone’s joke. But at the same time, it’s not a single thing. It’s a multitude of stories layered on top of one another.”

“Funk is life for me. Funk is everything. We all need some of it in our lives, so guess who’s here to give it to you?”

Gainesville soul singer Little Jake Mitchell is a featured chapter in John Capouya's book, 'Florida Soul: From Ray Charles to KC and the Sunshine Band.' "Jake, as I say in my book, is basically, he’s the living history of Florida soul music and he continues to keep soul music alive."