Born in Mississippi, raised in Pennsylvania, Patty Smith now calls D.C. home. It’s here where she’s spent the last decade selling Street Sense. She started in 2005, two years after the paper was founded. Her life, like many struggling with housing stability, was steeped in unexpected setbacks, bad luck, bad relationships, and bad health. The one constant through the tough times has been music — Patty looooves music. She’s always singing, taking the pain and the grief of life — the blues –and transforming it into song.

A full transcript of this interview is available here.