Quite simply I've distilled my mission down to the essence. The only thing I'm really here to do is shine light on people's lives through music, through laughter and to simply enjoy being with people.

I buy records from all across the board. I get kind of a hybrid of influences in my own music.

I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.

By the end of the writing process, which is about 80 songs per album, I look at the material and think, what's going to make a difference in someone's life.

But you are beautiful And you better go show it So go look again You gotta be true to your own If you really wanna go to the top Do you really wanna win Don’t believe in leaving normal Just to satisfy demand ((Beauty in Ugly))

For the first thirty years of my life I exercised very little, and I smoked cigarettes for ten or twelve years, and I ate junk food. And I began to see some elders in my community's health decline, and I didn't want that to happen to me.

I came from Mechanicsville, Virginia, where you have four seasons.