I really enjoy what I do and have been fortunate to pursue basically whatever I’m feeling at the time.
I see a lot of parents now who are really supporting their kids playing music.
I think I’ve just gotten better at learning how to write a song.
It seemed at first that everybody was more concerned with my age.
If you get raised up having everything you want and then get put out in the world and try to live your own life, you’ve never had anything to train you how to live.
I’ve literally become comfortable with approaching whatever style of music at any time.
I’ve been in fortunate position of never really having to battle with my record company to do the things I wanted to do in the studio.
I’m glad I’ve learned what I’ve learned when I learned it.
I’m glad I didn’t know certain things earlier, because then it wouldn’t be any fun.
I wanted to have something that I was proud of and that I knew people would enjoy.
I think my favorite thing is the mystery of life – it makes you feel that much better about accomplishing something.
I think it’s like everything you do is just a reflection of who you are as an artist.
I think in the future I will end up doing a gospel album.
And as I got older and played more, people began to forget about my age and took the music more seriously.
You know, being able to, in my mind, have a song that you know doesn’t really have any loose ends or you know, extra fat in it, so to speak.
Yeah, but Jesus is the most important thing to me and I want to be bold about it.
It’s an honor to win a Grammy, of course.
I’ve been getting into different gospel artists; Aretha Franklin is someone I’ve been listening to a lot of.
I think I’m more influenced, just in general, not by blues artists, but more by stuff from Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder is probably my biggest musical influence of all. And Donny Hathaway.
My dad was good friends with the Bad Medicine Blues Band – one of the only blues bands in Fargo, as you can imagine! He took me out to see them play when I was 12 years old and I was really inspired by their guitar player, Ted Larsen.