“James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for ab...” — Vonda Shepard Quote

James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together.

I just kept making records, touring in Europe a lot, and then I had a baby in 2006, so my life has been very, very much family-orientated.

I've been through the entire gamut of the music industry - I've been playing in clubs since I was 14, and I've been on Warner Bros, on Sony - I've had lots of successes and some serious times of struggle.

At first, I wanted to start my own label, but it was such a full-time job that it became too much.

It wasn't until the Apple Macintosh that people understood what true hardware-software integration was about. It took one company to line it up: low-cost hardware, cool graphics, third-party products built on top of it, in an all-in-one attractive package that was accessible to consumer marketing.

In a lot of ways, the cool thing about modeling is that other people and artists I look up to are able to project their artistic visions onto me, and it was really exciting to be a muse in that way and carry out a vision.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

It's just cool to witness talent.