When you enter into something like cancer, especially in the Midwest—my father died of cancer, my grandmother, my aunt—you don’t talk about it. When I got it, I was like, “OK now, wait a minute … ” There’s a lot of things that we put up as fear around us. We’re not going to talk about sex, we’re not going to talk about politics, we’re not going to talk about religion. And I let people brand me. I let Ann Coulter say that I was a completely godless person. And I started to think, “Who said just because I’m gay, I have no God?” What gave me that power to remove that Midwestern taboo was having cancer and finally standing up and going cancer cancer cancer cancer. Standing up in front of people bald at the [2006] Grammys. For me, that was like a jump on a rocket, I lit it and took off, man. I haven’t come down since.

From Performing Songwriter Issue 104 Cover Feature

From Performing Songwriter Issue 104, Sept/Oct 2007

Category: In Their Own Words