"my first experience with Pete Seeger was weaning me from rhythm and blues, which — as my parents badly wanted to do. They were horrified. They thought all rhythm and blues singers were dope addicts, even though they didn’t know what dope addicts were. So my auntie — they spirited me away with my auntie to a Pete Seeger show. And it was like a vaccine. Either it was going to take or not. And it took. And I loved the music, and I discovered that this man did what my family, in a sense, had done for many years, which was, having become Quakers when I was eight years old, fused everything with their politics. And this was music and politics in a way that I had never known. But it was so natural to me, his music and what he did with his life. And I understood that very quickly. And when I found out at an early age — I don’t know if this is myth or not, but when the press went to his house for an interview at one point, that he was on the roof tacking a few of the last shingles on, and he wouldn’t come down, and he was ready. I knew this was a man I wanted to follow for his political and musical events that he did. And so, I did. There was Harry Belafonte, Odetta and Pete. And I listened to Pete’s music endlessly and heard the stories about him and learned his songs and followed him."