I try not to "perform." I try to come on stage and be myself, to sing the way I would in a room by myself, to interact with the audience the way I would relate to them if we were in my kitchen drinking tea and making up silly songs. Maybe the way to get past the fear of being ourselves is simply to try it more often.

Music is still part of my spiritual life. Sometimes I sing my prayers. When I get audiences singing, I hope I'm helping them feel connected to something beyond themselves.

I don't want anything to get in the way of me and my singing. I want my mind as clear as possible.

Whenever I'm onstage, I try my best not to think that I'm performing. It's simply another part of my day.

Improvisation means coming to the situation without rigid expectations or preconceptions. The key to improvisation is motion — you keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.

To be a musician, you have to be honest... to be honest... to be honest.

When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.