My experiences with dope were not good for me. I had to go another route. Because in my experience, dope didn't give me those insights.

I'd much prefer to hear somebody like Ed Thigpen [drummer with New York session group Stuff, and featured on innumerable hits] take a solo. I mean, that's what it is. I'd much rather hear that than the jazz/rock thing because it's blowing an aspect of jazz that I really like...the level where you can snap your fingers to it and you can groove to it. You can do anything to it.

I'd been performing in bands since I was 12 which represented, at that point, about 16 years of playing music.

I'm talking about noise rock. I don't think that noise rock element belongs in jazz. It's not for me anyway; it just doesn't fit.

When I started out in this business, I was a performer before I was a songwriter, I was a performer before I was recording. Performing is the roots. That's where it all came from. You didn't start out doing it because you wanted to make an album.

Once you start to analyze it [Joyous Sound], you've completely lost it. That one just came.

Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.