Slavery doesn't have any positives.

[Mortal City ] was also the beginning of the reality of the fact that I was going to have little pieces of my personality identifying with all of these different parts of the country.

Writing 'February' made me realize that breaking form is a way of letting the song be human.

Now that I believe in God, I have an extra layer of saying I'll write about what I write about and assume that I'm being offered the opportunity to illuminate something important. But when you think you are too important, you become some sort of fascist.

Youll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.

I try to be careful not to do single concerts where I fly out, do my show, turn around and go home.

A lot of the songs are pretty unmasked. If you listen to "As Cool As I Am," it's not all that different from what you were hearing from Ani DiFranco and some of the other indie women artists of the time. It was still in that context, still seen as folk music.