I grew up singing Mexican music, and that's based on indigenous Mexican rhythms. Mexican music also has an overlay of West African music, based on huapango drums, and it's kind of like a 6/8 time signature, but it really is a very syncopated 6/8. And that's how I attack vocals.

My feeling is that the beaches should belong to everybody. Nobody should be able to build anything. It causes erosion. It's a bad thing altogether.

The constant fear of a performer is to become what is reflected back at you.

Up until about a hundred years ago, the world was dark at night. You got to have a real night so you could sleep.

When I would be on the stage singing, I would see a movie of something that happened, I would be telling the story. I would be describing the story in sound, but my goal would be to make somebody else run their own movie.

When the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby, it helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky.

American radio from the '30s through the '60s was just fabulous. There was such a diversity.