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Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

I was listening to music long before rock 'n roll.

I think a lot of people came into rock n' roll to try to change the world. I came into rock n' roll to make music.

My mom loved rock n' roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. He liked classical music and Duke Ellington.

We had a really vast music collection and I was raised around rock'n'roll, it's just the way it was.

I base my roots and history in old blues, old country and old bluegrass, and I like rock 'n' roll, and somehow it all came together, and that is what I am playing now.

My mother's records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn't hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n' roll - so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.

I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll.

I grew up listening to everything. And rock and roll has always been a big, big part of it - as big a part of what I do as any other type of music.