I was just learning to play guitar when Tracy Chapman came out. She wrote these songs, she played them by herself and I so admired her for that.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've been hugely inspired by the songwriting of Lauryn Hill and Tracy Chapman - on their albums, they really tell it like it is.
My mother had a great vinyl collection, and she was constantly playing female singer-songwriters. I first learned about classic song structures by listening to them, and Laura Nyro particularly stood out. Her voice was outside what you'd usually hear on the radio; that really appealed to me.
I've studied several guitar players and songwriters, mostly from Al di Meola to Dimebag Darrell, from Freddie Mercury of Queen to Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Bradley Nowell of Sublime.
I'm a songwriter, that's what I love.
I learned that the songs that mean the most to me are the songs that I write by myself. While there were people I wrote really well with, particularly Gary Nicholson and Delbert McClinton, and I really enjoyed the experience, I came away from it feeling like I need to write by myself.
When I was writing my autobiography, these songs came up from time to time which were important to me, and I realized that what they really represented was, they'd come from this age of shared music.
I am a songwriter. I do get to put my personal experiences in song.
I've made my own music, and the way I've always described it is Peggy Lee with an electric guitar, or Billie Holiday with some PJ Harvey in there.
I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.
It's a gift that I have and I became good at it. When I heard my first song I didn't even know that I could write songs.
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