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

I've watched my peers get better with age and hoped that would happen with me.

I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.

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.

Distribution has really changed. You can make a record with a laptop in the morning and have it up on YouTube in the afternoon and be a star overnight. The talent on YouTube is incredible, and it can spread like wildfire. The downside is that it's very hard to convince the younger generation that they should pay for music.

I'm not that beautiful, and I don't want to be a pop star.

I don't know that I'm unique in that people relate to my music, but I would hope people would say that I'm honest and that I do the best work I can possibly do instead of coasting.