People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist.

The search is in the doing.

Social change really cannot happen unless people are willing to take a risk, and they were. And I was so moved by that, and of course by the way that he spoke, that made a huge dent in my belief system and my spirit.

I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.

My dread is for my show to be a nostalgia act. So the key to it is how do we keep it fresh?

I don't think of myself as a symbol of the sixties, but I do think of myself as a symbol of following through on your beliefs.

We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood.