So what did that scene look like and how did, did your family's relationship with music impact the musician that you've become?

Well, I mean, I've been thinking about that all day, getting ready to talk to you, but I mean, it was everything, you know, because the music was what they call social music.

It was music we made for our own friends and family.

My father, mother, all my family there in Mississippi were pretty, they're pretty wild cards, you know, You know, they like to entertain and they like to, you know, have banjos and fiddles and people around.

And so they were never professional musicians, but they were serious about their music.

And that was one of our serious pastimes that we did.

And so, you know, paint the picture.

Can you tell me about the postcards? Like, did she save them? Did you see them? What meaning did you glean from those postcards?

But I'm just curious if you could just kind of tell a little the story of how that idea for that germinated and who Rosetta was.

Well, just, I mean, in a nutshell, Rosetta was, she was the nanny for my Aunt Toni Carroll in Duncan, Mississippi.

So she was the black lady that worked in the house.

They were cotton farmers, and I would spend summers there with my aunt and uncle and my cousin.

And so Rosetta was the the help that's how i just most people understand that movie what that looks like a little white dress a black lady working in a white person's house and then there's little me and uh so i'm just navigating all this and i always thought of her as one of the family so starting as my earliest memories rosetta was there and as as time went on i started to realize all the different Ways that race can come between relationships like that and the divide.

She was a monumental person in my life in helping me so many ways, understanding where I'm from, what her world was like.

just a great great person and um big in the baptist church you know and then well along about the 90s come to find out her father was charlie patton now some people may have heard this story heard me tell it but charlie patton considered one of the pioneers of basically american music i mean they said delta blues but to me he's a pioneer of american music a revolutionary And come to find out, Rosetta was his daughter.

know,

How did that come about?

Well, my mother's family is from the Delta, from Clarksdale.

And when I was growing up, they'd leave the kids with whoever would take us.

Aunts, uncles, that kind of big Italian family.

and uh so spent a lot of time with all of my relatives really um uh but particularly the the rosetta thing was because my aunt tony carroll who's my godmother she was married to uh like a cotton farmer in the delta down there pretty big cotton farmer they were pretty wealthy really probably the wealthiest people in the family and uh they had a housekeeper and uh Nanny, cook, you know, all around woman that helped out with the household around there.

This little old black lady.

And then I was always just really, I hung out with her all the time and we would just talk and laugh and talk.

How long have you been doing that gig and how did that come about?