Growing up, I was always around adult musicians who played for their entire lives. So that's what I wanted to do, and I always had that in mind.

Growing up in Dallas, my first influences on the guitar were T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. T-Bone taught me how to play lead guitar behind my head and do the splits in 1951 when I was nine.

I think the audiences abroad are older and come from a more mature society. They have a different understanding of whats happening as art.

You have to know what your value is. I started learning my value when I was 12 years old.

When I was a child, I saw in the news that a person from Belitung had done well in sports in Jakarta, and I just couldn't imagine that it was possible for someone from here to become famous, and it's still very isolated out here.

There's nothing more pathetic than listening to a football game over the Internet, but I've done that.

Lake Pend Oreille is definitely my favorite place to be while in Sandpoint. I love to get out on a boat to enjoy water sports, camping, fishing, or just to relax and catch a sunset.

It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.