I don't think I came to music. I think music came to me - or was already embedded when I came into this sphere, this realm, this Earth.
Music saved my life. I mean, music is life. It is everything to me. It's why I can meet people - I was so shy as a kid, and when I started to write songs and perform them with my sister in front of the public, people started to talk to me, and that made me feel really good. Everything about it has always been positive.
I came from the Philippines and Filipinos are incredibly musical. I mean the best cover bands in the world come from Manila!
Happiness is just a great equalizer. It's like water. You pour happiness liberally and all sorts of great things are going to happen.
If you can give people happiness, you're in their hearts. Now you can just start having conversations with people that you would not have had under other circumstances.
I have this theory that people are actually really hungry for sonic space and understanding words, and I think that people are ready to look back and actually appreciate some of what came before. And then you really do have the entire movement that I'm just going to call feminist, because I am a feminist. I think the education of young girls and women about what came before has started and I think that the knowledge of Fanny is part of that.
We had to be our own mothers of invention, in many senses of the word.
You can't have an all-girl band! They'll get pregnant, and they'll never stay together.
There was a lot of camaraderie among the bands. I remember a lot of times when I'd be driving up Laurel Canyon and pass by the house where Frank Zappa was living and I'd just see people out on the porch playing guitars.
I rented a summer home in the winter on Long Island, I took long walks, and then I ended up moving to Woodstock. It was a fertile musical area and time, and I played with a lot of different musicians there, including getting into women's music, and I ended up playing with Cris Williamson.
