My friend Megan Holken is a nutritionist. I have spent some time at her home upstate in Sharon Springs, where she told me how to eat right and cook right.

I remember my sister and I - my big sister would get up on her chair in the kitchen and sing Mary Wells' "What's Easy for Two Is So Hard for One." It was 1966, and I was 10 years old.

You know a man can play the part of a saint just so long for a day comes when his true, his true self unfolds.

Youth. The fact that, in the mid-'90s, guys like Lee Fields gave me and all these young people the chance to do backup. I was in my 30s, but some of those guys were still teenagers. Others were 22 and 23 - babies, all of them.

I really can't wait to dance with Ellen DeGeneres!

My fans have written me such kind emails. My management at Daptone helped me heal, too. I'm in a good place.

I've got these five-pound weights and a treadmill in the living room. I work out the other parts that have affected my voice: my diaphragm - doctors took mine out in surgery - and my lungs. I've got to build back my legs, too, so I can run across that stage. I've got a lot to do, but I'm going to get out, sing songs and tell the stories.