There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.
We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.
At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered.
So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.
We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.
With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things.
I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.
I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them.
There's a time and place for everything, and my focus is music. So that's what I prefer to spend most of my time doing, and not talk about making music.
I think religion played a huge part in Bush's re-election.
I'm a hopeful cynic.
I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me.
Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
What does the future look like if the heads of society ask our young people to risk their lives for questionable causes? I think it looks rather bleak.
Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.
It's fun playing small venues.
Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.
I won't get into it any more than to say that there are parts of me in all the songs that I write.
We do need to think about how we have security - everyone has a right to that - but we also need to think about how we maintain civil rights and personal freedom.
One of the reasons I chose Tufts is that they have one of the best veterinary schools in the country. Since I was six years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian.
