You don't have to live the blues to play the blues.

Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they're active and they talk about it.

One of the advantages of not having a record contract is that you can make your own mistakes, you don't need somebody else to organize them for you.

What I try to do is produce an atmosphere where musicians want to invest in what they do and give to the recording. I hire those musicians who I know will play something creative and interesting.

I was raised in Brooklyn, and I lived there for 59 years.

But when I first got cancer, after the initial shock and the fear and paranoia and crying and all that goes with cancer - that word means to most people ultimate death - I decided to see what I could do to take that negative and use it in a positive way.

My father's father came from Russia; my mother came from Romania.