Every time I do a gig, my goal is getting new fans.

[I've worked as a guard at Rikers Island] from 1988 to 1990.

I sing because I'm happy.

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.

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'm grateful to be alive, because I really did not think I was going to be alive, onstage performing songs.

Not only do I say, get up and get out, I tell the cancer to get up and get out. And if you don't get up and get out, I'm going to shout you out. And I get to shout.