I'm not trying to amass people in the streets. I just want them to be more aware. So many Americans, for one reason or another, they watch the news and it doesn't really give them the idea of the world. Or they don't read or travel. They have no idea that America is part of the world and not the world itself. And so anything from the travel stories I tell, that's what I'm trying to get across.

I try to be well informed. I don't know how well I do all the time, but I try nonetheless.

People like Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and M. L. K. are larger than life to me. I find myself staring at photographs of Lincoln almost in disbelief that he was a man who walked the earth and not merely some fiction writer's creation.

Every summer, around late July and into August, I find myself in Europe, performing at any festival that will have me.

My mother, a very eclectic listener, had the first Doors album and gave it to me when I expressed interest in the band. It was one of the first records I ever had. As the years passed, the babysitters who used to look after me would bring their Doors albums to the apartment, and that's how I got to hear their later work.

When you're very young, images that you upload into your very young mind tend to stay with you.

When I was a kid looking at pictures of the Sphynx, and the Pyramids, and different tribes in Africa, all of that stuck with me, and I always wanted to see those things and meet those people.