There's a beautiful, kind of seductive trap in being autobiographical in our writing of songs: We just get stuck in our own syrup, and it's so personal that it almost can be embarrassing to the listener.
The women and the men are teachers and preachers in my family, and a little bit of both those fell on me.
I'm a real Otis Redding fan, and I just think he sounds so good. He sounds like he's always at the end of a long day, and he just won't give up. I just love his wearied devotion - that beautiful, beautiful, weathered sound.
Salif Keita's one of my favorite artists.
'Moffou' is one of my favorite records.
I studied opera for a year at Georgia State University, but I wasn't interested in that meticulous, technical approach to music. So I left school and went back to jazz.
I have no ancestral link to the mountains. But I really do feel close to mountain culture. Their ways of food, of thinking. The way they hang out with no recording devices and just sing songs with each other.
Surrender is working with what happens.
The church is an institution of music and of production and performance, and it has to do with taking people to places inside of themselves and giving them an opportunity to sit deep in their own feelings, and to be together and deeply alone at the same time, and to process things.
Making a record and being a touring artist is about cooperation between spirit, craft, emotion, and focus.
I let the song guide me. I move through the space that I'm given rather than trying to make an impression on the material. I'm curious to learn from the music.
I love songs that create moments that are very personal and that tell a story.
I'd been trained in choral, gospel, and a little bit of opera.
We had no television, and I only heard the radio when my parents went out to a Bible study group. They liked a quiet, meditative house.
I want to record, tour, and just live life.
Life is good. It might not go the way we plan it, but that's fine. We just do what we can.
My mom has a couple great tricks, but my father is consistently a good cook. He's extremely avid about health and fitness and a bit obsessive. He always talks about garden-fresh food.
I really just want an audience that is willing to let me live my life and share with them what I get out of my life.
There's a lot of pressure that comes from the mainstream stuff, and already people who have been saying - people who don't know any better - have been saying things to me like, 'You should really think about neosoul. You'd definitely be more successful in that.' But that's not my expression.
Where I come from, music is not a business. Sharing music is a business, but music is not a business. It comes from the people and belongs to the people.
