I love writing songs with people, which is about really taking risks, throwing yourself over the falls and really seeing what you're made of and seeing how it sticks. Seeing how others react to it, and seeing also how it can become a melody and how it can really take off from your experience. It's a way of seeing life unfold on the page before me.

I basically had the idea when I was 18 that I wanted to write my own songs. I knew it was going to be a long, tough road, and I was like, if I just begin now, by the time I'm 40, I'll be good at it.

Other people's lives are affected by how you are treating yourself and the way in which you are performing.

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 get my most creative energy after a show, so I love to go back to the hotel and compose new material. I generally do it in a rush. I have to get it out, otherwise I can't sleep.

When I first started, my message was about joy, but I didn't really have the vocabulary and life experience to fully deliver it.

Open up your heart and the sky is yours.