DOTTIE PEOPLES Interview: "I Got This Live" New Album Tomorrow, Radio Show In March

How excited or nervous are you about "I Got This - Live" coming out tomorrow and your own radio show?

Both! I'm excited and nervous and hoping the fans go out and purchase, because they're going to enjoy this. It's one of my best. And of course, we're out on our own label, and hoping this time around that this CD will do well. I'm just really excited, or else I wouldn't be out here all this week. This really wears you out but you gotta do what you gotta do!

Yes I'm excited about that! It'll start in March and I'll be doing a weekly 'Tips From Dottie" for the ladies; tips on fashion, health and beauty. I think the ladies are going to enjoy that.

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How did you get into ministry work?
Being a kid in the church with my grandmother. Following her and watching her singing in the choir made me want to sing. When I was 20-21 I found jazz and I did that for a minute. But I decided I didn't want to anything but gospel, and been doing gospel ever since.

Do you have a personal testimony story you'd like to share with others as they begin they're walk with God?
The one thing I could do to encourage any young person to sing Gospel is the stories that so many tell you how you have blessed and changed their life. When you know you have had this kind of affect on a person's life just from singing a song, it makes you more so than ever want to get out there. When I recorded this CD I said "Lord let the people receive a blessing from you, from this offering that we're giving to Him with music>"

One of those songs is going to touch somebody. And at that moment when they hear that song, it's going to help someone. I've had people tell me they've come off drugs. I had one family whose mother was sick and they played my music by her bedside. She was in a coma and woke up!

Things like that really, really want to make you keep singing, it makes you want to keep on blessing God's people with a song.

What are some of your biggest musical influences? Any secular?
I feel like I was born to sing music when I was in school. I was a lyric soprano, I've gone to contests. I've been to the opera, I love country-western. I love all types of music. I love Aretha, I love Jennifer [Hudson], I love Beyonce. I love all of them! I'm not prejudice when it comes to music. If you can sing, you can sing!

I have a rapper on my new album. I feel we need to encourage our young people. As long as they're singing for the Lord and as long as they're singing for the Cross, it doesn't matter to me if they crossover. As long as they crossover with the Cross.

Do you have a tour planned to promote the new Live CD and radio show?

We kicked it off with a lot of promotion, going to different CDs doing radio. But we are hopefully going to try and do a big tour. I want to start in Birmingham, and Nashville, in the South. The weather's better, it's cold up here [New York].