When I went to Memphis and Mississippi and Nashville, I learnt the blues is a whole way of life. I don't really have the blues, but I can appreciate the honesty and the simplicity of it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I didn't really grow up listening to blues, because I grew up in the Northwest. It wasn't really the center for blues.
There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money.
The blues brings you back into the fold. The blues isn't about the blues, it's about we have all had the blues and we are all in this together.
I spent a few years here in Memphis, in the late '70s and early '80s, where I was studying a lot of country blues players and their styles. So it seems like every record I'll do, I will appropriate these blues styles that I remember.
The blues is played everywhere. There's no place I've been where they don't have blues or aren't interested in blues.
I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.
I sang in church growing up. Memphis is the blues capital of the world, we like to say.
When I was growing up, the blues did seem too simple to me. I was just a muso.
I love blues. My grandfather did blues.
I like the blues a lot. I grew up on it.