I think that anytime that you can open your eyes and see all that you have and all that you've been blessed with, it's the greatest way to connect you with God, just being grateful rather than always wanting more, wanting to be different, wanting to be better.
Beth Hart
I don't think that Americans are ungrateful, not at all. But I do think that we are a young country, and we have a lot to learn.
It's very important for me to do things like talk therapy. That's where you begin to see the walls that your illness has put up as a way to protect yourself... but of course, those walls also keep us from getting to the truth of things.
If I love Etta James, it's not just the voice, and it's not just the song, but it's the energy that connects me to her, so if she is strong, I can be strong, too, and if she is sad, I know I am not alone, or if she is joyous, I can connect with that joy.
'I'd Rather Go Blind' was a song I did on an album with Joe Bonamassa called 'Don't Explain,' and I've always been such a huge, huge Etta James fan.
I learned about forgiveness, and I've reached out to others to make amends.
My story is how to have a life while dealing with mental illness, and I've had a life. I've been blessed. It's been a different kind of life than what I planned on, but it's been a good life nonetheless.
One of the beautiful things about music is it gives you an opportunity to learn how to tell the truth, and it's a life-long learning process.
I don't really see myself as a success. I just don't look at it that way.
I had so much anger and judgement towards myself for my work not being up to the standard that I expected it to be, so I wouldn't allow myself to complete anything.
I cook stuff that I picked up from my husband's mother. I thought that would be a good way to his heart, you know. I love to cook Italian and French, also.
I was very neurotic as a kid, but I also used to pray to God as a young kid in school. It was a form of meditation to slow my head down and not make me feel nervous.
My personality is a personality where I get really, really nervous and doubtful about almost everything, which is always a work in progress to build up my confidence a little bit more.
I think that, being on the road, you've got your family with you, so there's no way that you can have a closer feeling to a group of people that you love than when you sit down and have a dinner or a lunch or a breakfast together.
I love 'Fire On The Floor.' It's just smouldering. I think it's gonna be a fantastic piece to perform live. It's filled with passion. It's about when someone you know is so bad for you, but you can't help it.
I always feel like you never know: sometimes you can put out work that you feel is really strong, and other times, you can put out work you think is less strong, and people react to it, so it's kinda like in the eye of the beholder!
I ran away at 15 to chase a guy that I met who would become my boyfriend, and he was living in L.A.
I'd been trying to do this since I was 15, sending out the demo tapes and doing all the things that everyone told me that I should be doing. But no deal - like, never.
Sometimes, the songs that really affected me were not from the artist catalogue of their music, like the song 'Thunder Road' by Bruce Springsteen. I never got into any of his other music, but that song, to this day, is in my top three lyrical masterpieces of all time.
I'm a Bipolar 1, Rapid Cycler. So really easily, if I'm around people that are sick and are not medicated, and there's a lot of people going to AA that should be medicated that are really, truly mentally ill, then I end up being triggered.
I always try and be as positive as I can and give people the benefit of the doubt because, in my own experience - seeing myself fall so hard so many times in my life and do so many things where I lost my way so many times - and then people didn't give up on me, like my husband and my family.
At first, I was using my sister Susan's lyrics, as I could not write myself, only the music. And then one day, she and I had a fight, and she threatened to take away the lyrics from all the songs that I put the lyrics to, so it was that day that I began writing my first lyric to the music.
If you work hard at something, you're going to find a way that you can live in this life, no matter what your handicaps are.
I know what makes me connect to my music - it is knowing that I am not alone in my feelings and my thoughts.
I should be writing songs about happiness all day long, but a lot of my songs get inspired from that place of unworthiness and shame, which really goes with mental illness.
'St. Teresa' is one of my favorites. It reminds me of the importance of grace.
The transition from fan to performer to recording artist, for me, was like learning how to dive... and each board got higher and higher.
If I'm in a good place, then I'm really open-minded to what's being presented, but if I'm in a bad place, I'm much more closed-minded.
Each night, we try something new, play different songs, see what works, what goes down well, mix it up a bit until we find the right mix.
If I'm writing the music, and I don't feel like its really connecting inside, then I'll know there's no reason to really put a lyric on it; it's a waste, and I'll throw it.
I never want to hear about going to hell if I did something wrong. But I do use Jesus as my curve point, and I think of his teachings when it comes to how I want to treat people.
No matter where I go, I never write the setlist until I'm at the venue.
I have no idea what was the first record I ever bought, but I think I asked my mom to buy me... um... a collection of Beethoven when I was a little girl because I became very addicted to his music. It might have been piano sonatas.
Meditation is really good. I do that a lot with my bass player Bob, and we do TM: transcendental meditation.
I don't ever go and write music for an album. That's not something I do. I don't go and write music for an audience or a career; I don't do that at all. I write basically all the time. I'm addicted to it.
I'm writing all the time when I'm at home. When I'm on the road, I just get ideas, and I put it on my iPhone.
I love getting to have different food and getting to be around different people and different cultures and different ways people look at life. It's really kind of helped me open up my mind and see the world from different perspectives.
I got into cello in the fourth grade, and I played that for years. I adored playing it. I got an opera coach when I was 12 because I really wanted to learn how to sing properly. The only proper way to sing, I thought at that age, was opera.
Before I was on medication, the mania was so bad that I couldn't concentrate, so although I'd feel very creative, I could never really finish a piece of work because my mind was moving so fast.
I really love Dinah Washington and anything live from her - she had some of the greatest jazz musicians in the whole world, and sometimes she would be with a big band, and sometimes she'd just be on stage with a muted trumpet, upright bass, and a piano.
If I ever had to choose between having a good mind and good health with having big success, then there's no contest: I'd put my health first every time.
What I look at, success is about really being grateful. You wake up in the morning, and you're thankful that you could breathe because it's a beautiful planet we live on, and I know there is a lot of struggle and pain, but there is more joy.
As a kid, I hated home, and I just wanted so much to learn or do something that could take me away and keep me away forever. And then I got blessed to get to make music and meet people who wanted to work with me. And then, the next thing I knew, I was on the road, and I was gone.
I'm not a doctor, but I would assume that anything that you're doing that's harming you, and you can't stop doing it, is a sign of mental illness.
I'd be a liar if I said I didn't care what people think, but I would rather have less people who like or approve of me for who I really am than a bunch more people who like or approve me for what I'm not.
I think that's always the hope - I mean, I can't speak for others, but I think other artists, no matter what type of medium they are using - whether it be from painting to acting to dancing, songwriting, or anything like that - I believe the desire is to get to the truth, and I think it's really hard to tell the truth.
'Better Than Home,' the song, is about getting out of your hiding place and having the courage to live as loud as possible. It is about feeling the life that has been given and has been waiting for you all along.
When I'm going through something really difficult, I think it's what made me go to the piano for the first time when I was a child. I look at it as a place to pray.
,what saved my life was my husband. He nursed me back to health, and he continues to do that to this day. It's not easy to be married and to have a relationship with someone with mental illness.
I worked with Mrs. Davis for four years, and then she realized, as the material started getting harder, that I had never learned to read. I was just listening as she'd play the song, and I'd play it back. When that happened, she got very upset and stopped being my teacher.
