I love the power of music and artistry and feel a responsibility having a platform to preach good things.
I take the purest and hardest forms of music... and come in completely fresh from a production standpoint. It's like hip-hop production, because there's a lot of taking the best parts and a lot of the repetitiveness.
Nothing unifies people more than music, more than that universal riff. The one thing that unifies us and the hope that we can have, especially being an artist, is that we can create music that can build bridges and smash down very bad ideas.
I think once I had lived life, once I had failed enough in this lifetime and got back up a thousand times from failing, I really connected to the blues.
I don't mind being the voice of the New Oakland to maintain the integrity and edge of it. Old Oakland and New Oakland is one and the same. It's connected. I aspire to be the bridge between both.
What did winning a Grammy do for me? It made me want to get rid of my Grammy, pack it away, and never see it again. It made me not want to speak to anyone who wanted to speak about my Grammy.
I want to be an artist, not be in the business of making hit records. Once I figured that out, everything became clear.
I wanted to do life, do something interesting. I ran out of things I wanted to say in my music, so I just put it down, sold all my gear, and put on some overalls and reconnected with the soil.
I heard Skip James, and it pierced me. It felt like punk rock to me, real and raw. It was just one guitar, so simple yet so much expression. I wanted to feel and express like that, to take the shortest path to get to an emotion.
So-called leaders aren't doing anything, so it's become the job of artists like me. We have to get on the front lines and fight for the people who have love and tolerance in their hearts and want to live in a unified world.
I can't just sit back and write about the club when our democracy is under attack. I have to be a more positive force.
I throw up before every show. I'm thinking about just making it part of the act.
I always call myself a recovering narcissist. I lived my life thinking everything was about me.
I think things happen, and we have no control over them, and what you take from them is really what is important.
Music is something that's so powerful and means so much to me.
'Push back' is the word; that's what we gotta do against ignorance. I see so much of it, and it's dangerous.
It's amazing: when you are challenged with less, sometimes you can produce more.
Live performance is everything. First of all, I have terrible stage fright. But beyond that, once the music starts, it's OK.
When I look into the audience, and I just know we understand each other, I can see their faces, and they know what I'm talking about. I feel like I've helped. Everything I've been through in my life, it helps people. Then that makes it worth it.
I usually go to secondhand stores and find what I can. I like finding interesting things: vests, blazers. I tell the band, 'We got to look good when we're up there.' I learned it from Miles Davis. I read about his suits in his biography. Suits mean you're getting paid, and I like the idea that he looked good in his suits.
