I tend to write out the first iteration of a lyric here and then go over here and make variations on it, on the page opposite.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about Black music, about soul music.

Won't you look down upon me Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You just got to see me through another day.

It's a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you're being autobiographical.

Music is like a huge release of tension.

I think good music makes you feel free, and if people feel free when they come to a show or listen to my music, that would mean the world to me.

Photographers and reporters are mostly after me. They want to know what I read and what I'm like and I don't really know myself, so how can I tell them?