My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.

I never planned on being a live performer. My whole forte was about being in the studio, producing, playing the piano on recording sessions. I was all about the studio.

Whenever I wrote songs - particularly back then - it would always be for a particular artist.

To play with a band all of the time, just about nightly, was good for me because I wrote lots of arrangements and I got a lot of my transposition and chords ironed out.

As an early child, I tried to play every kind of music that I heard. I thought everyone was doing that.

As a young child, I thought that all pianists played everything. I mean, I thought anything on piano - any piano music, all pianists played it.

My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.