MY POPPA WOULD SMOKE A PIPE WHILE HE SANG. He was a Methodist minister and I remember him singing on the porch in North Carolina. I was born and lived there until I was ten, and we relocated to Maryland when his ministry moved. My mother was sunshine. She was the warmest sunshine ever—never raised her voice, always encouraging, always looking for the good things in people. She used to say: “It’s too easy to find the negative, look for the good. There’s good in everybody.”
NOBODY TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY THE PIANO. It’s just something I was able to do from a young age. Somehow I sat at the keyboard and I was playing it, without knowing why or how. People would act surprised, like, “What’s happening?,” but when you’re a child and you can do something you I must have been two-and-a-half when I started and I never questioned it. I wrote my first song when I was three. I can’t recall what it was called or what it was about but writing and playing were like breathing to me.
