I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel folk and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

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.

My folks have played everything from rock disco pop funk and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz classical and Latin. With all this in my pocket I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.

Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place which is different than me singing the blues where I can sing 'Oh baby ' if there's a pause in the melody. With jazz you better leave that space open or put in something real cool.

I didn't want to go out and change anything. I just wanted to make the music that was part of my background which was rock and blues and hip-hop.

My first car was a 1976 Toyota Corolla Liftback in red like the one in 'The Blues Brothers.' I painted a Union Jack on the roof. I was absolutely in love with it until I destroyed it which broke my heart!

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.

Lorne finally said Do the Blues Brothers thing. The response was amazing. People went nuts.

Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick and some of that stuff was made on wire not even tape let alone digital.