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Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.

Actually, a lot of my influences were horn players. I really liked Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and Miles Davis - people like that. My dad had a lot of those records. So when I started playing jazz primarily, it wasn't jazz guitar that I was listening to.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

I want to expand jazz; I don't want to keep the audience limited. I want to reach people who have never come to a jazz concert before. One way to do that is by making records that have a lot of different kinds of music on them.

If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

My genre of music is very eclectic. I might play some Latin jazz, or just go into a spontaneous jazz thing. That's the thing about coming to one of my performances. Not every show is the same.