Finding another way to do what I know I can do pretty well. A way that stimulates me. I’m always on some sort of learning curve. If I can continually be surprised then I’m alert.
I was competing for attention in a four-piece band that was phenomenal, and I was trying to attack the blues from a kind of white English viewpoint as a singer.
What I lack in style and craft, I can make up for in joy and enthusiasm. I like to be around people who are at ease so I like to think the 25-year-old would find me quite an easy-going late-middle-aged hippie.
My mother was a gypsy, and she had a lot of dark blood in her, and her hair was very, very thick – she couldn’t even get a brush through it. So I have been very fortunate. And every time I go to cut it off, hairdressers refuse to do it.
I use the music almost as a compass in some kind of quasi-romantic way. I try and go to places that I’m intrigued by, and I take this music with me, using my name at the front.
I don’t think that you can rehash music that was born in the Fillmore East and came from a whole different set of social and emotional circumstances. The situation has changed. Let’s get real about this.
I absolutely adore and idolise women. All women. I think they are all amazing. The female musicians I’ve met have been far more inspiring than the male ones. Women tend to be much more creative and ambitious. I think I may have been a woman in a past life.
