Although my dad was a doctor, we weren't necessarily a super-artsy family. We were just a classic, traditional family who got to take a lot of piano lessons and became a bunch of musicians.
Music is something I couldn't live without. My dad was into music, he played for pleasure - guitar, piano. I started off doing jazz, singing with a lot of fabulous musicians here in London before I went to the States. And I still take piano lessons every Wednesday.
The piano has disappeared from working-class family life, which is a shame. It's associated with the middle classes now. Everyone in my family sang and played piano, but my parents were delighted and amazed when I became the first professional performer in the family - apart from a clog-dancer way back.
None of my family are musicians, but there was a lot of classic rock and country going on. I always wanted to sing. As soon as I expressed an interest my mom was super supportive of me.
I started taking piano lessons when I was about four years old. My parents were both musicians. So I took piano lessons. I didn't like the lessons very much, but I was enchanted by music. Music always transported me somewhere. Singing made feel good and being able to play the piano made me feel good.
I started taking piano lessons when I was 8 and I wrote my first song shortly after. Music was really important in my family. My grandma was a professional violin player and my parents first met when my dad was giving my mom guitar lessons.
At school there were some programs in music. I did take piano lessons, and we had a piano at home. I got very interested in that.
A lot of our family was undocumented. My mom and dad were both super conservative. My dad had a green card; my mom was an Eisenhower Republican who did not approve of all the 'illegal people.'
There are no doctors in my family, and I've joked about this, that my dad got the doctor daughter he always wanted. But I would make a terrible doctor - I hate the sight of blood!
Growing up, everybody would cross the border, even to just do grocery shopping. A lot of traditional American foods stuck with my parents and became part of my upbringing. This all had to do with the proximity to the border. We were an absolute mix of classic Americana, traditional Mexican, and Baja cuisine.
My dad left when I was a little boy and I grew up with my mother's family. There were foundations in the U.S. where Jewish people got together and sent money to Cuba, so we got some of that. We were a poor family, but I was always a happy kid.
Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons.
It was just music all day... My neighbors were musicians, and my brother and my family and everybody... It was just a musical neighborhood. I think the neighborhood was such a good family type of vibe for me that I didn't even realize some of the people weren't my real family till later on in life.
I basically am the only musician in my family. My aunt plays a little piano, but that's about it. My dad's mother painted and was actually good at it. I do not come from a long line of musicians, though.
I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.
I think my husband and dad were both very happy that I had a baby boy, to get some testosterone in the family, because there are a lot of girls. It's not a perfect family, but it's a strong family. The nice thing is how the different ages interact.
You can take lessons to become almost anything: flying lessons, piano lessons, skydiving lessons, acting lessons, race car driving lessons, singing lessons. But there's no class for comedy. You have to be born with it. God has to give you this gift.