I am insubordinate by nature. I can't help it.

I love Aretha Franklin, Edith Piaf, Blondie.

I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized.

I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because that's where I practice and write and listen and study.

There's nothing wrong with struggle. Anytime I look back at a difficult phase of my life and see what grew out of it - the creative survival tactics - I think that the good is way better than the bad.

For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution.