For a long time I was trying to be poppier and younger. I didn't want to be on public radio or do any of that stuff for older people. Then I realized that that is exactly what I listen to.

My career could've been anything, I just wasn't that good at other things. I'd say it was fairly easy starting out as I did in LA, meeting some great friends and musicians and landing a record deal. That's where the hard work began though.

Most artists never get a chance to be Picasso, but that doesn't mean you would stop painting.

I don't try to stop myself from becoming too personal. I just put it all out there. If anything, I try to remind myself to be as honest as possible all the time. Why hold back?

I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren't really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins.

Internet radio stations like KCRW do take you everywhere, yet thats just one of a hundred small things you have to do to succeed. It used to be, if you just got on the cover of Rolling Stone and a spotlight on The Tonight Show, that was enough.

I'm a hybrid-genre person, which a lot of people find confusing. I grew up listening to American country music and rock n' roll made between 1955 and 1959. The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry were my first musical loves and are still what I am most moved by. Roy Orbison came a little bit later.