I can sing the blues and I have sung the blues. I feel it internally when I'm singing.
I had a long-term relationship that failed. I had some health issues. When you dip down emotionally you can gather some things that help you when you do rise. If you go through it and you're OK, you can develop some scars that help you in the time after.
A professional music career goes in starts and stops. Around 2000 I was doing a Broadway show and that was some real good energy.
I heard Smokey Robinson was singing one of my songs on the radio the other day. Being in the presence of Mavis Staples, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott - Stevie Wonder joined me on stage recently. That blows me away.
But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.
My mother was a minister, so I grew up in a church. My grandfather was a minister; there are a bunch of ministers in my family.
Gospel music was very prevalent in my house. My mother also loved Nat King Cole. That was some of the first music that I heard. Mahalia Jackson, Nat King Cole and the Mississippi Mass Choir.
Nat King Cole's lyrics were speaking to me, almost like fatherly advice, when I was listening to him alongside the console stereo player. So that music and that influence comes out of me.
Sometimes I'll be in circles, and I'll say I'm a jazz singer, and they have no idea what that means.
There's a lot of female singers and I don't want to dismiss them, but the male - and I have to be careful - the black male voice in jazz, whatever you say, is an important voice, because there's a tradition of the music that should be touched on, there's a sound that should be touched on.
When there's an imbalance in terms of what people get to hear, then that's negative. Then blues, jazz, it will die.
The funny thing about nationalism is that there are two sides to it. Some parts of it are beautiful, but there's an ugly side as well.
All the events that have made up the character and fabric of British culture and everything that has happened to make up the fabric of America culture - art and music - includes the faces and the colours of a lot of people.
If I can hear the music then no, I don't hit a wrong note. But if I can't hear the music because the audience is screaming or the sound system is bad, then I'm subject to stray.
And I've made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.
The nice thing about living in a semi-small town is that I can just go home and switch off. I go home now and I trim roses, rake leaves, wake up early in the morning and scare the raccoons off the lawn! It's kinda nice, that's the way I turn off, in Bakersfield, California.
I think sometimes you can be around somebody and take in certain energy and read certain things and you don't know why your neck is stiff. But if you can recognise the negativity, once you identify it and you know what you are dealing with you can make a point to counteract it with a different energy.
The best career advice was to sing with an understanding and internalise the music - that was my mother's advice. Sing with intention, believe what it is you're saying, and think about it, before you sing it.
It's been some surreal moments, you know from performing at Buckingham Palace to having dinner with Stevie Wonder, it's been an amazing ride.
Because I am away so much, I try to establish home in people, rather than places. For example, wherever I get together with my brother the place we're in becomes home.
