I have a vision for everything that I make, but... I'm not that considerate about what I do. I do whatever is in my head and how it ends up tends to be the thing that it's supposed to be. It was never a premeditated decision.

You play a couple of shows, and these label guys come - and they leave halfway through a show. Then the phone calls just stop. And your heart is broken.

I'm not an L.A. guy. I don't take meetings - you know what I mean? I don't really know how to interact very well with people in L.A. because everybody's got an agenda and everybody's like, "What do you do?" "Where are you going?" Or it's like, "What do you know?" And I'm not on a grind - I was there to make music and to meet people but I wasn't hustling for anything.

I want to talk about things that are tangible and real to me, but I also want to do them in a way that's poetic and artistic.

Its always important to fall back on your instincts and core beliefs and that was pretty hard for me to do but trusting in my self the way I trusted that if I were to sit at a piano for two hours and I was going learn something, that trust I'd put in myself really helped me get through it. For five to six months I just wrote songs and believed they would turn out to be things I could be proud of and be happy.

Food in Dublin has gotten immeasurably better than it was. When I was a kid, there weren't a lot of options. Now you're overwhelmed with options.

My favorite records are not easy - they're not records that reveal everything to you the first time out.