I probably wouldn't be singing if not for Michael Jackson. When I started singing I didn't like my tone until my mom put me on to Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder so listening to the way they used their instrument helped me get more comfortable with my own.

So much of our lives are defined by habit or what the guy next to us is doing never wondering and knowing who and what we support with our actions from the detergent Mom always used to my favorite dish I make... A lot of my life is unexamined habit.

My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins and as members of our local Boy Scout troop.

There are days when I wonder why my mom couldn't be here to see this.

My parents are wonderful and I'm really lucky - but my mom has always been almost exclusively a right-brained person.

I look at my father. He is one of my heroes. He is such an incredible classy man. He was such a great father and such a great husband in so many ways and we lived through some pretty tough times losing my mom. When I see all that he did I think 'Wow that's a really wonderful man.'

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

Grades were important in our house. I was reading by two. My mom would sit there and read with me read with me read with me. It was wonderful.

I was thinking that when I have children that I should always dress as a character for them so they think their mom is Alice in Wonderland or Cinderella. It would be totally messed up!

I was thinking that when I have children that I should always dress as a character for them so they think their mom is Alice in Wonderland or Cinderella.