I grew up with my dad's music, so my introduction to rock was Alice Cooper and Cinderella and Dio and Black Sabbath, so I was listening to a lot of dude bands - Guns N' Roses and Metallica, all that stuff.
I've been in the songwriting circuit as well. I've been in a couple writing camps where there are seven top writers or whatever, and they're writing songs for a young girl or a young guy that are coming up, and they're kind of nuts.
I didn't know that women go through a vocal change, which is called 'thickening'. Basically, it's like when your body gets ready for childbirth, and so it just grows in a weird way. When I figured that out, I was frustrated with it.
In my world, before I knew about Eddie Van Halen, I was playing piano, and at that point in my teenage life, I thought he was just a guitar player.
We're so humbled and lucky to be in a position where we've been a four-piece for over 15 years. We're signed to a major label. We're on our fourth record on a major label. We've won a Grammy. We've toured the world.
As musicians, we are quite literally singing for our supper. Don't get me wrong, I love touring, but the reality is that our idols from the '70s and '80s never toured this hard. They'd do a record, have one big world tour, maybe two, then break to do another record.
