Mayer
You've been making moves in San Francisco, how'd you get into music?

SB
“I started singing when I was around six, mostly in church choirs and glee clubs, I left home when I was fifteen because there were problems at home my parents wouldn’t even let me be a cheerleader, let alone a singer in a rock band, so I was outta there. I’ve had some unlikely opportunities to work with some pretty famous blues guys. I can’t say how much I learned from Charles ‘Blue Boy’ Huff, who was one of Sam Cooke’s original Soul Stirrers, talk about singers, he really taught me a lot about singing. And there were others

Mayer
Congrats on the success of 'Ball &Chain', who are some of your influences?

SB
I was largely raised by a black nanny named Lulu who she played AM radio all day long to the consternation of my
mother, I was weaned on black groups, girl groups, gospel because of Lucille. My influences are Tina Turner, Darlene
Love, Nico, Velvet Underground, anything by Phil Spector, ,maybe Grace Slick, she wasn’t necessarily the greatest singer, but she had a lot of style & was ahead of her time. I always thought she was cool as hell. I didn’t really listen to many white singers, I couldn’t learn enough from them. A lot ofpeople have compared me to Janis Joplin, whom I never really liked or listened to. Maybe because of the black gospel influence. I didn’t ever like her song selection.

Mayer
What are some of your proudest moments in music?

SB
Oh I don’t know, I don’t think in those terms. I’ve been lucky, but I’m not very materialistic & probably don't have the same career goals as a lot of musicians. While I do promote the band’s music, I’m not really comfortable talking about myself. I’m just a singer. My ego isn’t all tied up in this. I’ve had several bad stints with heroin addiction, and this affected my values. When I was in my early 20s I got pretty well-known in NYC, and I know what a music career brings &doesn’t bring. I like to sing, & I probably shouldn’t say this in case Sony’s listening (which they may be) but my dream was always to be an underground cult star, I never wanted to be a Pop Star, my goal was to appeal to other musicians.

Mayer
What cool stuff is on the horizon for you?

SB
Just did a duet with Sammy McBride of FANG, and Ron Rancid has also expressed interest in&doing a duet with me. Rikk Agnew; I will be starting a duet at Paul Roessler’s studio Kitten Robot, in a couple weeks. Paul’s also mixing &
producing my next EP which I did with my band in Oakland. Arion Salazar from the original Third Eye Blind was our bass player, and when he joined the band, it really started to sing. Carl Green, the famous black tenor sax player, is also on the next record. I just moved to LA, and things have really exploded since I got here, My manager, keyboardist, and great videographer, Mark Ludlem, has been shooting video almost non-stop. We covered Social
Distortion’s Ball &Chain which has almost 60,000 hits in less than a month. With Sammy, we did Jackson and
that’s got over 20,000 hits in a week. LA has been good to me thus far. If anyone’s asking, nothin’s happ’nin in the Bay Area. Forget it. Dave Jerden had me come down to meet him in LA a few months back about producing some songs and he said, “Silke, you’re wasting yourself up there. You gotta be in LA. It’s the only place in the world to be a musician today. Sadly, that’s true. There is no scene in the Bay Area.