Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown's saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo's bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, "Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special." I got the chills.

By the time I was six or seven-years-old, I had learned several techniques of how to use my voice and was able to choose the sound I wanted to distinguish myself, so I started writing songs on the piano.

We're living in a time of so much clutter that has allowed everyone to express themselves at any moment. We have access into people's lives like never before. It's a lot to take in and it's easy to get overwhelmed and swallowed up in it.

Everyone faces challenges from the fierce competition as well as the manipulative crooks that are rampant throughout the music business.

Home is a place from which you can draw strength.

If you follow a trend, by the time it is released it will sound like the same regurgitated music that the public has been hearing for the past eight months (at least.) I am not referring to genres or production that is considered to be timeless or "classic" sounding.

In Europe, radio stations are owned by a variety of different entities, so there is less uniformity on radio programming and more opportunity for artists to get radio play and break overseas.