I think that every new record is a chance to... I think what it is for me is my heart and soul at that moment in time... I've always felt that just being able to make a record is a privilege.

I was really young, but I can't say that I wrote much of anything. I liked to scribble; I thought of it as that. But I was playing guitar and ukulele when I was in second grade.

I don't really remember my folks singing to us, but they read to us.

I was a liberal arts junkie and I figured, well, I'll go work for somebody somewhere. All I knew was that I was going to have to come home and figure it out.

You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.

In the late 80s, artists could be signed to labels and be nurtured. It wasn't, "We're going to give you one shot, and if you don't measure up, you're gone".

Emmy Lou Harris introduced me to the work of the Vietnam Veterans of America foundation and the Campaign for a Land Mine Free World.