I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope.

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age. I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and... I had a desire to create always. And I always had a desire to show my work.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.

I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

In order to make my solo shows as interesting as possible, I moved songs onto very different instruments so that I was moving instruments quite a lot during the set.

In order to make my solo shows as interesting as possible, I moved songs onto very different instruments so that I was moving instruments quite a lot during the set. I didn't want the set to be boring. So I'd moved some older songs onto the autoharp, and they worked really well.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited. That gives me energy to want to make new things, and it forces me to hear things in new ways, which then can only help to say things in a new way.

My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone.

My mother and father are very involved with music. It's completely part of their soul. They have an incredible record collection, all vinyl, of some of the best artists, in my eyes, that you can come across.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

There's also a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doing, that requires quite a lot of study and quite a lot of hard work as well.

There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other.

People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses.

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical.