I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.

What you want is for music to love you back. That's why you pay your dues. You want to feel like you belong and are part of this symbiosis, metamorphosis, whatever you want to call it.

My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name.

My friends think I'm ugly, I gotta masculine face.

In terms of black music - the only music that we can call our own, that was really born here - I don't think a lot has been done to chronicle the relations between American history and where black music fits in.