I say sorry to my wife about five times a day for various reasons.

I like to jump some rope and swing kettle bells to get my blood pumping. It makes my voice sound better, and it clears my head.

I had a couple albums out that sold well for who I was at the time and the type of music I played. People started recognizing my name and face and it helped sell bigger venues. I had a bigger spotlight and I had to live up to it but I thrived under that challenge. It expedited the creative process. If I was on stage in front of 300 people instead of 30, I had to work harder at my performances because I had a greater responsibility. It was very exciting, but creative too.

I guess play piano, you know, because that's the thing I started doing when I was a little kid.

Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

[Frank Sinatra] was an incredible artist, the best at what he did, but it never occurred to me to model my career after what he did. There was no one I modeled my career after because there was no one else who did what I did.