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

The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.

With the new ways of getting music out, you don't need a label if you're a legacy artist.

I would love to see a revival of what we had against the war in the '60s - we could do these teach-ins on the internet, live and split screen, and have real in-depth debate between people that are on the "other" side of issues - nuclear, gun control, whatever. We could really be having a much more democratically involved and exciting debate with people emailing their questions and having a virtual town meeting.

It's very personal in California to live within hours, and sometimes just a few miles, of earthquake faults when nuclear plants were being built.

Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.

I think people must wonder how a white girl like me became a blues guitarist. The truth is, I never intended to do this for a living.