It's quite hard not to cringe at your own music; you're always a bit annoyed at some parts of it.

The main thing in making your own music is that it's an expression of someone's personality and being. That's what people want to hear, and you can't really teach that - that's just something that comes out. Teaching just hones that.

With writing music and writing songs and recording music and coming up with stuff, you need to kind of reengage that kind of inner child to come up with interesting perceptions.

Finding out that Ray Charles sang country songs but it sounded as soulful as any rhythm and blues record that kind of opened up my horizons for what songwriting was and what singers I could listen to.

I love grooves and dance music, but I like the feeling behind songs too.

Listening to a lot of guitar rock and roll music and feeling quite eccentric because everyone expected me to learn and develop like R&B. This kind of made me feel a little bit better, because I realized it was all the same, you know. There's no difference. It's just music.

You always have in the back of your mind that would be cool if you get recognized. But you can't concentrate on any of those things. You've got to just keep playing and doing your music and the rest is just a bonus.