Passenger

I've got friends and my family and people who've been around for years and years and years. And those people are never in doubt: They'd be my friend whether I was a homeless dude, or I had a hit single.

You see a lot of bands and a lot of artists making that mistake: They become successful for doing something, and then they change everything. They change the people; they change the approach. And then, all of a sudden, almost the essence of what you do is gone.

I believe it's important to put all of your energy into what you're doing rather than doing an office job and trying to muster up energy for music. It's been a real blessing to play music full time.

I can find myself in a situation where, by the time I'm releasing an album, I have the next one written. It is a bit old school.

I've played in some pretty weird settings; busking puts you in all kinds of situations. I can tell you the most depressing gig I've played was in the North of England. At that time, I was playing with a band. We drove 7 or 8 hours to Carlisle to play a 600 - 700 capacity venue - 9 people showed up.

I'd say 99 per cent of the time I write on my own, just with my guitar, and then it's trying to figure out what it needs in a production sense.

I have spent a lot of time out in Australia, and so I have a good little fan base out there.

Sometimes supporting is difficult because a lot of people go to a gig to see the main act and to have a beer and a chat with their mates, so a lot of the time, even if you were John Lennon, would not listen to you.

I dropped out of school at 17 'cause all I wanted to do was play music. I had odd jobs on the side of gigging until I turned 22, when I was lucky to start doing this full time.

I write wherever I am. It helps that the writing process, for me, is a lone-wolf mission.

I'm very much of that old-school mentality of believing that if it works with an acoustic guitar and a vocal, then it should work within any format - and especially when most of my live work is just guitar and vocals, so it really does have to work with only that.

I think you've got to be careful with social media. You can get addicted to the buzz of people liking and commenting. It's exhausting.