The worst thing you can do to a kid is tell them that their dreams are invalid.

I think early on I avoided singing because it was so personal and I didn't know how to sit in that intimacy. I wrote songs when I was little and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.

I was like twelve or something, when you first kiss a guy and you see the way the guy reacts, how they get really excited, or whatever. And I'm perceptive, so I think, "Ah, jeez, is that something that I'm able to do?"

In acting, you have a writer, a director, a character - you're working through being another person - and the irony I always tell people is when I acted early on as a teenager, it actually kept me out of trouble.

When I first started, I wrote some songs with Linda Perry. She's so instrumental in a lot of artist's lives, listening to you and then helping you write songs that are you, that bring the most of what you are out, whereas a lot of producers might put their stamp on you. I gained confidence because I'm less of a straight-up, traditional vocalist.

I can write a song in the back of the bus, where I am right now, or in my living room, and I can perform it that night and have an instant reciprocal exchange - an emotional, impactful exchange - and it's a less technical medium. It's a pure expression from my soul to other souls.

What's exciting to me is the live show medium itself; it's the last untouchable medium. I don't think it will ever go away. It has gone on from the beginning of time with little performances around a campfire, I'd imagine, like cavemen doing some chants, rhythm, and sounds, beating on things.