I was a veteran, before I was a teenager.

My dad knew I was mad about music. While he worked as a barber he would hear songs on the radio and we'd have endless discussions about them. So I got my first record player when I was 11 years old.

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.

When I was 17 - 16, my father and I cut wood all day long and I was swinging that crosscut saw and hauling wood.

I grew up in Chicago, but I spent a lot of time down in Kentucky, and Kentucky was about 20 years behind the life that was in Chicago.

I lived most of my life in Texas, but I've settled down in Pittsburgh. My husband is from here. We met at a Flyleaf show in Columbus.