I don’t judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they’re a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person.
So every time I make a new circuit, a new time around, then I change the show. You can’t change the songs; people still want to hear “Lady Sings the Blues” and they still want to hear some of the oldies.
It’s easier for me to sit with the producers and the writers and I give them my feelings and my thoughts and what I think I feel like singing about and then they go away and write it.
I learned something from that. If someone asks me something that I really don’t want to do, I say no. I have to trust that. And I’m not afraid to talk money.
