My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.

I'm pushing ahead on my own - you no longer need a large record company to make you a star.

No one knows anything for sure.

I just try to tell a story with a song, and be able to try to transmit the emotion to you. That's all I'm really trying to do.

It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.

I'm always tryin' to do something new, tryin' to look like a beginner.

I think leaders are incapable of the strength that passive resistance entails.