My earliest influences were things I heard in my household..

There is not a lot that keeps me glued to the radio as I used to be..

Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music aro….

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..

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

My first love was the sound of guitar..

I love working with the quartet. I have more freedom and flexibility..

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 ….

From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or….

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist….

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 v….

I feel fortunate that I was able to step away from it when I wasn't interested..

I'm not a jazz singer..

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, a….

I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life..

The short answer is, yes, I think I have become a better singer..

I would say that I'm finding my voice in more ways than one..

I'm easily distracted by other things in the world around me..

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

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

I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning..