“My mother was a Mohawk, born and raised on a reservation, and when I was a kid, she would take me there to visit her relatives.”
“Sixteen years on the road is long enough. Twenty years is unthinkable.”
“Think about the number of people who do film music, make records and have a Native American heritage - and I may be the only one on the list.”
“My mother told me when I was a toddler and in the crib that they would have music playing, and the thing when I lit up was boogie-woogie or something out of the Louie Jordan period of sometimes big bands, and then all kinds of things.”
“My thirst for knowledge and experience comes from the idea that once you learned something, it was time to learn something else. I missed out on a formal educational process, so I'm making up for that.”
“One of the greatest live recordings, I think, in the history of the world is Ray Charles in Atlanta... And they didn't even have a big mobile recording thing set up. The word on the street was they only had like two microphones, one for the band and one for him. Perfect recordings. I think it's mono.”
“The direction is going the right way for respect for aboriginal people in North America, and all we can do is stand up and say, 'Please do it faster.'”
“I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.”
“Some bands today have the experience of really working together and honing their craft. And other bands are very much like, 'I just got a guitar for Christmas, let's start a band.' And you can hear the difference.”
“When I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to meet Buddy Holly. I asked him how he got that big, powerful sound out of his guitar amp. He said, 'I blew a speaker and decided not to get it fixed.'”