Since I was 20 years old, I've been a kind of corporation. I'd wake up in the morning and my job was to be 'Bonnie Raitt' in capital letters.

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

I don't go into any album with a concept or a deliberate direction. It's more letting the best music that really appeals to me at the time, the best songs that I find after many months and years of search and sifting through my collection, and asking radio people and journalists. It's really an ongoing search that's as much daunting as it is somewhat exciting.

It's a lot harder to be clear-headed, but the good stuff is when you start realizing who's really you.

You create the happiness and the balance that you have, and your own power. This is one thing that I know to be true.

Really important issues are getting lost, so I can say I'm glad to be a citizen of the planet and do my part.

Thank God for Occupy and thank God for 'The Daily Show,' Colbert and the rising up that's going on around the world.