As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.

My parents were music lovers and collectors. It was around.

My first love was the sound of guitar.

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

I'm not a jazz singer.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

Philip says to fear me. Do you have any idea how afraid I am of him?

Along with rising and falling water, winter is the province of wind. When the sea-breath and mountain-roar bend the hemlocks of these hills, the birds hang on as best they can.

I still love when any editor today says, "it's so cool what you do", or "you inspired me". All these little things make you realize that people are reading your site and that you have an influence.

As an English player you are lifted when the crowd gets behind you. The atmosphere over here can be unsettling for the Australian players and I hope all our fans get behind us.

If I'm going to do blues, it's going to be a typical Jimmy Rushing record.

Yes, I do agree we need health care reform; however, this bill badly misses the mark. Congress can and must do better for the American people.

Every unjust act, even committed for the sake of a just cause, carries its curse with it.

It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow.

Remember to always dream. More importantly, work hard to make those dreams come true and never give up.

For success in life you need yukti (skill) and shakti (strength), Bhakti (Devotion ) and Mukti (Freedom).