Connection to the music and the history was very powerful to me. I think that's what I feel the most blessed about.

I had pestered [Phil Wood] for a long time. He finally agreed to do it. And I was excited and nervous and he couldn't have been nicer or more supportive from the minute I got to his house.

[Charles McPherson] was kind enough to go to a record gig of mine where we recorded a song of his.

We were poor [with my mother], and we didn't have too much. So we sat on the floor and we had a record player, and that's all we had in that room in the apartment. But we had whatever we had. Six records and a record player and it seemed like magic. Seven or eight years old, you know.

Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.

When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.

I definitely had some moments, where, "Wow, these were some hard chords" on some gig.