Mostly singing was cathartic, writing was cathartic, therapeutic. I don't think I had a goal, particularly, to sing or put it out there for anybody.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I came from a very musical family, so I grew up singing karaoke with the family. My family said 'do this' and brought me to singing lessons. I had always been writing poems and songs.
I always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, 'cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else's songs.
More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.
The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.
Writing songs for other people was never the goal for me.
I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel.
I sing because it soothes me, and I write because I want to let others know that they're not alone with their problems.
Singing didn't really come naturally to me, I don't think. I had to really work at it. I just kept singing. I never was really worried about it, though, because I was writing songs, and that was the most important thing to me.
In my early shows, I wanted to put myself through a new childhood, disintegrating my whole identity to let the real one emerge. I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing.
In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.