I needed an opportunity to get back in the studio and get my recording chops back together.
People live their lives through melodies. If you can't sing, then music is worthless.
My public image is so low-key, but I get to travel the world and still have an audience and it's really amazing. I don't take that for granted.
For me being the youngest, there was never ever anything that was an issue to cause rivalry between me and my sisters.
Any room where you feel a good vibe is a good place to write.
Europe seems a little softer, but in America it's harsh. In L.A., where I live, it's all about perfectionism.
I was eating bad stuff. Lots of sugar and carbs, junk food all the time. It makes you very irritated.
Wearing sunglasses at night hurts your eyes after a while.
It's hard for me to just practice without writing something.
It's weird, like, my life has always imitated art, and my art has always imitated life.
The album is a definite departure. I haven't written original material before, except for one song on my first album, but Elvis and I did six songs together on this one.
I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.
Having the balance of a work life and a family life has been so good for me.
The thing about my music is, there really is no point.
My parents offered me the idea of ceilinglessness. There was no limit in terms of what was possible; no messages sent to me to say that I couldn't do anything.
I don't like to be labeled, to be anything. I've made the mistake before myself of labeling my music, but it's counter-productive.
There is no singing anymore, everything is yelling and shouting and rapping and that is real boring to a guy like me.
When I'm not touring, I sing at home, either at the piano or I'll pick up my guitar, singing old Buck Owens songs.
Urbanites may picture farmers as hip heritage-pig breeders returning to the land, or a struggling rural underclass waging a doomed battle to hang on to their patrimony as agribusiness moves in. But these stereotypes are misleading.
There was a time when fast playing and fretboard pyrotechnics on the bass were important to me and when I am recording a bass track, that is still very important to me.
You take all the things that frighten you, and when you can get them to work for you all of sudden people are calling you a success.
I'm not a singer. I'm not an R&B singer. I'm an artist.
Let me be very honest and just say that if any airline would let me take the violin and the laptop on board I would fly that airline all the time.
Paul Butterfield and I had a band together at one point.
No one really knows what I'm really like, and you won't unless you spend a day with me, or if you're my friend. No one ever knows what anyone is really like. Read all the interviews you want on them, it's just the media talking and you can't really get to know someone that way, obviously.
I think, in music, you're always hoping that you'll have a like-minded audience and that the music you like making will appeal to them, too.
I couldn't be touring unless my husband was on the road with me, taking care of our son while I'm onstage and doing interviews.
'House of Balloons' was actually supposed to have more songs than it does.
I've done that I was touring a couple of years ago with R. Kelly and the Lillith Fair, I would do the late night underground gigs as well because it's always around those times that there was a hot song, either on the radio or in the clubs, it would just be simultaneous.
Every night we all felt grateful to be there, stunned at the amount of people that are there, and stunned at their reactions. They go crazy; they know every lyric from eight years of age to eighty. It's unbelievable.
The thing is, I really like working. If I sit around too much, I get really bad anxiety.
I'm not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I'd rather be figured out.
Commercialism isn't challenging creatively; it's only challenging in a stamina way.
I think a lot of people want to be remembered the way they were, as opposed to the way they are now.
I can't tell you how lucky I feel to be able to collaborate with some of my dream producers.
I'm 27. I feel like I get it. I'm OK with being sexy if I feel like it. Some days I'm brainy, some days I'm funny, some days I'm sexy, and sometimes, I just want to dance.
