My father's nephew was the blues musician, Lowell Fulson. Every time he came around, he had a pretty car, a beautiful woman and a slick sharkskin suit. Believe it or not, that's how I decided I wanted to get into music.
Tulsa was the kind of place where you could go to any door and borrow a cup of sugar. Everybody knew everybody. Truthfully, I don't even remember dealing with any racism in our town; we all got along.
With the Gap Band coming from Oklahoma, other artists would tease us by calling us cowboys. We didn't grow up on a ranch, but we took that style to the stage. We knew that it was corny, but at least it was ours.
In the beginning, I was frightened to death of going solo. Especially when doing live shows, I was so used to my brothers being next to me. It felt like the crowd was just looking at me, waiting for me to either mess up or prove myself.
