As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life.