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I found out how great the E Street Band is. The reality of a band that you can't scoop aside, can't put in a corner.

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.

Although my music is electronic, it has a lot of influences from my past, which is all sorts of genres; I've been in a rock-metal band for a long time, and I still feel like, personally, I have a lot of influence from that. My classical influence, you can find spots here and there.

The best thing about the E Street Band was we had the best lead singer around.

And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers.

There were some older guitarists on my side of town, and I got to know many of them.

Michael Sunday and I are the original members of the band. We first did it just for charities and benefit concerts. It was very ad-hoc, and before we knew it, we were really a band. We went through several drummers and guitarists before we were happy with the line up.

There are incredible musicians around the world.

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.