If you're looking to make a basic living selling and playing your music, the Internet is all you really need.

I think a lot of singer-songwriters get compared to each other, but I'd like to think that what I'm doing is special and specific to me.

In college, I faced an interesting problem. I wanted to play music all the time and yet I wasn't ready for anyone to hear it. To remedy this, I took to retreating to stairwells as a safe place to sing and write music. It was there that I wrote most of my songs in college and really grew into an artist.

I don't have any rock star demeanor to me. I just can't pull that off.

The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made.

Ever since I was really really little, I was just singing all the time. Like one of my favorite games when I was little would be to just have one of my sisters pick a title, and I would impromptu create that song.

Being hapa, or more specifically, half-Japanese half-Euro mutt (English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, Welsh, German. . .in case you were wondering), has definitely helped shape who I am. It's very cool to get to identify and learn about all these unique cultures and I think it's helped put the world in perspective.