“You have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the Blues.”

My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time.

I heard that music, and it was part of my upbringing.

I can sing some polkas. And proud of that.

So given those things yes, I’m introducing some new music that people haven’t really heard me do in quite this fashion.

Until my knee said, “Uh-uh,” I was jogging. Then I started walking. They don’t like walking a lot, but I’ll push them.

A very few minutes, because seven days later I was in the studio, and eight days later, I was no the stage.

You really have to count your blessings and you have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the blues.

My dad graduated seminary there, and so did (sounds like) Mark Kimball’s grandfather. They sang in a quartet together, my dad and Mark Kimball’s grandfather.

The ones that you sing when you’re driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.

A couple of incidents of shortness of breath and checked myself into a hospital, but that one in France really sat me down for a few minutes.

Let that get you up in the morning and put the light in your eyes. I’m telling you, it makes you a better husband, mother, father, neighbor, citizen.

I discovered is that I have a couple of valves that were leaky and had been giving, gave me a problem then. But I hadn’t noticed anything up until then.

Every day is Thanksgiving for me, man. Yeah, I still have an audience, and they ask the local promoter, “When is Al coming back?”

It’s all background experience and listening and exposure.

I would still be singing, because it’s part of my heart and my soul, and it lifts me up.

and I was listening. I started singing, warmer than a summer night, at seven or eight years old.

I’ve not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I’ll listen to ‘Spiral Scratch’ by the Buzzcocks, or ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.

The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.

FLYING DOWN SUNSET SMOKING CRACK TRANSVESTITE IN THE FRONT EDDI MURPHY IN THE BACK MOP HAD ME GRINDY AND GRIDDY MARILYN MANSON.

Unless you’re willing to fight and refight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every detail to make certain you’ve got it right, and then take hit after unfair hit accusing you of bias, there’s no use even trying.

Not since Cassandra Wilson’s Blue Light Til Dawn has a vocalist cast such an entrancing spell as Valerie Joyce does on New York Blue.

There are only four things in all cleaners – whether it’s shampoo, laundry detergent, whatever.You buy them in bulk and you mix them up properly, and they all work. It doesn’t matter if they call the stuff ecologically friendly or have dolphins diving around on the label.

Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.

When I was born, my father was a copper miner in Butte, Montana. It was a hard-core, blue-collar situation.