Even when I was a mailman. That job required no great skill, so once you got it down, you had a lot of free time to daydream and make up songs.

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations. Jazz speaks for life.

I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.

Those minutes that I'm on stage are the best! Being there and looking at the crowd and seeing their faces, hearing them sing the positive words from the songs.

In my songs, I try to look through someone else's eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.

There are so many self-references - it's always me in the songs talking about being in the song, like a character in a film that knows he's a character in a film.