Zitate

I find that it's easy to come up with about half the songs you need, but finding the rest can sometimes be a problem. I think that an album should always have a kind of prevailing mood and it should be like a book with chapters that go together; you don't have totally random chapters that have nothing to do with each other in a book, there's always a link.

Although I started out playing around the blues clubs and I'll never forget just how supportive they were of me and the band, the one good thing about what I do now is that I don't have to be pigeon holed in one area. I know that over in the States I need the support from Triple-A radio stations as well as the AOR channels, something that wouldn't happen if the new album was promoted as just a 'blues' album - because it's not!

When I was up for a Grammy I found the whole thing a little stressful - I was tired of being in a category of people who weren't about music. I was looking in the audience and there were people like B.B. King, Wayne Shorter and Willie Nelson all sitting there, and none of them were up on stage playing. They had Britney Spears, Will Smith and Faith Hill and I was thinking, Please, these people aren't even in key when they're singing. They were all miming and just selling their bodies.

People like B.B. King and Buddy Guy have helped me tremendously and given me some authenticity, something which I consider very important. The last thing that I ever wanted was to be some kind of overnight sensation!

I love Bonnie (Bonnie Raitt), but the truth is that when I was getting compared to her a while ago, I didn't even have any idea who she was! Of course now that I've heard her music I can see the similarities, which weirdly even extend to things like our birthdays being a day apart. But we both do like a lot of the same singers - people like Howling Wolf (Howlin' Wolf), BB, along with women like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Memphis Minnie and Koko Taylor - so it's bound to show somewhere. Bonnie also likes to take her influences from a whole range of stuff - Cajun, blues, New Orleans, so that when it comes down to it, the only real difference between us is that I have a lot more gospel. Over the years she's managed to carve out a very successful niche where she can get put into a rock category, and then still sit down and play an old blues by Skip James and so cross over more. I totally respect her in that way because you're reaching out for a lot of different audiences but not selling out, it's still all soulful and not like some packaged 'pop' thing. They key is that whether you're a punk rocker or whatever, the important thing is that you do it for the right reasons. I guess that the way I am, and by doing things that way, it's all going against the grain. But it's the only way that I would want to do it.