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I would walk down the hall with my guitar and play for anyone that would listen. As a young kid I was really driven and I was going to make it happen no matter what.

I'd just play 'til my hands fell off. My parents would yell at me to stop because they couldn't stand the noise any more! I was terrible! It must have been hard for them to listen to me as a beginning drummer.

While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound.

We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn't played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn't just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.

I would listen to Little Richard and Fats Domino and Chuck Berry, and I would listen to how they played their riffs, and after I taught myself that, I taught myself to play my own kind of stuff.

I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.

I'd experimented with so many different types of music. I had these folky songs I'd written and recorded, but something wasn't quite right.