I am limited by what I can think of to do-my choices are not so great.

Singing your own songs is all about individual expression

Every afternoon, I was in the pasture with cattle or fishing and shooting my BB gun. That kind of freedom allows imagination to develop.

When I first was trying to play the clubs around Houston to start playing my own songs, songwriters like Eric Taylor and Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt and Don Sanders were just really encouraging to me and would let me sit in with them during their sets and introduce me to the person that owned and booked the club.

Writin songs is like a mystery. The most difficult thing to do is have a good idea. If you have a decent idea, the songs are the easy part. Actually having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along. There are just some ideas that you get that are really hard to edit out; it's hard to stop thinking about some bad ideas. So you just finish it and you end up putting it on a record.

Home is where my horse is.

Denice Franke is a sensitive and compelling singer and songwriter.