You don't stumble upon your heritage. It's there, just waiting to be explored and shared.
To find a new star in the sky is pretty hard.
My thirst for knowledge and experience comes from the idea that once you learned something, it was time to learn something else. I missed out on a formal educational process, so I'm making up for that.
Music should never be harmless.
I never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.
Most of my younger Native American friends are not in any way looking for sympathy, and they're not looking to lay guilt on anybody. They have their dignity, and they do what they do.
Chuck Berry told me if it wasn't for Louis Jordan, he wouldn't have probably ever even got into music. That Louis Jordan changed everything and made him want to become a musician.
The road has taken a lot of the great ones: Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis.
I saw Ray Charles at Massey Hall.
I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from southern Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains - I love that stuff. It's like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.
I wanted to develop a guitar style where phrases and lines get there just in the nick of time, like with Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper. Subtleties mean so much, and there is a stunning beauty in them.
Record making is an extraordinary experience.
I admire those old road dogs, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. That's their life.
I'm not an activist.
That whole lifestyle - make a record, do a tour: I know how to do that. It doesn't interest me.
I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.
My mother told me when I was a toddler and in the crib that they would have music playing, and the thing when I lit up was boogie-woogie or something out of the Louie Jordan period of sometimes big bands, and then all kinds of things.
When I was younger, I thought I was too young to really be personal. I thought that what I was feeling and thinking might be half-baked.
My mother was a Mohawk, born and raised on a reservation, and when I was a kid, she would take me there to visit her relatives.
There's something so healthy about young people speaking up in unity.
