Teddy Thompson

I come from a place where there's a lot of musical families.

I still do lots of gigs where I'm the support act and people are chatting through my set, but I've got better at grabbing attention. I mean, my parents would play on bills with people like Judas Priest and get booed all the way through. But they stuck it out, got tough.

The state of radio is not great. It's like playing the lottery. The chances of hitting are mind boggling slim.

It's amazing that you can listen to any song and you can always tell when there's some substance beneath it and when there isn't. Even if it's poetically written and technically brilliant, I'd rather hear something that's all over the place but has some soul to it.

I'm never worried about being upstaged. I love to have the best, most individual people come in and see if we hit on something.

I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.

It's what is strange about doing a job that is also the thing you love, the thing you feel passionate about. People get to the point where they're burned out and disillusioned by the whole thing because when things aren't going well at work it also means they aren't going well in your heart, in your soul. They're all wrapped up together.

I'm a hybrid-genre person, which a lot of people find confusing. I grew up listening to American country music and rock n' roll made between 1955 and 1959. The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry were my first musical loves and are still what I am most moved by. Roy Orbison came a little bit later.

My goal when I started out was to get to the point where I could tour a lot and make a living, which means getting paid enough to hire my own band, travel and end up with a bit of money, but I'm still nowhere near that point. Because I didn't have a band and fan base when I started, I did everything backward.

Everyone's different, but it was fun for me to work with Garth Hudson. He's from 'The Band.' They are a massive influence, that was a big thrill. He's completely out of his mind.

I was obsessed with country music when I was a kid, and it's definitely had a huge influence on the way I write songs. I was always attracted to songs that had a brilliant pun or a clever turn of phrase, but came from a dark, bitter place. As a writer, I've always gravitated towards that feeling.

Country music was the music I was brought up on. It's the music that's closest to my heart and the music that speaks to me the most, and it's always been a big influence on my own songwriting.