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.

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.

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.

I was a guitar player first off.

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

You don't have to find out you're dying to start living.

Weight doesn't matter as long as you're happy with yourself.

Returning to South Carolina meant getting a normal job in a normal town with normal people and marrying a normal person. I wanted the glamour and opportunity of the world.

I just want my music to be put out there, not shoved in peoples faces. I want to keep it relaxed.

No date prefixed directs me in the starry rubric set.

I dont like Miami that much. I dont like the weather. My base is Miami, but I travel a lot.

And hold up to the sun my little taper.

We can't arrest and incarcerate addiction out of people. Not only do I think it's really inhumane, but it's ineffective and it cost us billions upon billions of dollars to keep doing this.

Because of acid, I now know that butter is way better than margarine.