He wanted to play accordion on something of mine and I said you can play accordion, but I want you to play piano and organ on some stuff. He came over a couple times a week for two weeks and gave me therapy as to whether I should do The Thorns or not.
I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.
I have no clue as to where my interest and love for music came from. In fact, I have never learnt any music either, though I wish that I could just close my eyes and play the piano - that is my most cherished desire.
My parents had a sidewalk cafe: every Sunday there was an accordion player and apparently I went through the motions, squeezing a shoebox. One of the regulars in 'the cafe said to my father: "I think you should get your son an accordion-that's what he's trying to do, with that shoebox." So they got me a little cardboard diatonic accordion-I still have it. I started to play the National Anthem, and things like that. It seems I was musically gifted-but my parents just never pushed in that direction.
I'm not very good at the accordion. If I played guitar, I wouldn't be on anyone's album. But because I play the accordion and no one else does, I end up doing strange things.
And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her.
I knew nothing of the life of a real musician, of course, but somehow I seemed to see myself standing in front of great crowds of people, playing my accordion.
The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly.
Nobody taught me to play bottleneck. I just saw it and taught myself. I got an old bottle and steamed the label off, put it on the wrong finger, I basically did everything wrong until I met some of the Blues legends early in my career who taught me another way. I didn't have anyone to tell me women didn't play bottleneck.
I taught myself how to play the guitar. I never studied music.
My father left his piano at the house when he left, and I wasn't allowed to play it when he was there because I wasn't as good as him. So when he left, I was determined to get as good as him, and I taught myself how to play music, and I just stuck with it, and I did it all the time.
I would type in things like, 'How to play beginner songs on guitar,' and one of the first I learnt was 'Hey, Soul Sister' by Train. I taught myself these chords I didn't know the name of and slowly started to get the hang. I was obsessed with it.
I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.
My challenges have not been around music. My hardest thing in music was just sitting down and teaching myself how to play and believing in myself.
Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We're taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A's. Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey bars, and then just jump off headfirst.
I can just be a Christian who sings mainstream music instead of having to be a Christian who has to somehow just sing Christian music.