As he tells it, Lonnie Holley’s story of growing up poor in the south is nearly impossible to fathom, marked again and—almost routinely—again by trauma. But then, too, by art, as he built a career as a self-taught sculptor and painter of found objects. Last year, at 62, after decades of singing while he worked, Holley released his jarring debut album, Just Before Music, a marriage of improvised keys and the rambling, hollow bellow of his voice, as well as the first original recording put out by the archival folk label Dust-to-Digital. This year, he’ll tour, and he recently starred in a Whitney Museum group show, “Blues for Smoke.” Exclusive video from that mesmerizing performance is embedded below. Here, in an excerpt from a two-hour speakerphone conversation from Dust to Digital’s headquarters in Atlanta, Holley tells us where he comes from, and why that matters.