When somebody shows up and they believe in you, it makes all the difference.

Everything I have now is so real, so vivid.

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists I've worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

I'm not like a legend that - so I'm sort of in the middle in this sort of gray area where, you know, I'm creating music and I'm not saying there isn't an audience because there is because all of those people go out and spend $80 to $150 on a concert ticket.

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.

The hardest thing to do in this business is to still be around. When music changes, when labels' resources have dried up, it becomes harder and harder to continue to make a living at this.

I just do what I do and hope it's accepted by the public at large. It's different from when Marvin Gaye and Stevie revolutionized what music was 25 years ago. Now there's all this technology that's available to everyone. It's tough to be ahead of anyone.