Novels may have taken care of the emotional business for me, which has allowed music to be more emotional for me.

If somebody had said to me back in 1988 that I'd still be making music in 25 years' time, to start with I would have keeled over with shock because I wouldn't have believed them.

There's nothing I like more than a writer who can sing, or a musician who has a book out.

If they'd said, "Do you want to be John Wesley Harding or Wesley Stace in 25 years' time?" I would have said Wesley Stace, but I wasn't to know.

A friend of mine pointed out to me, "Why do you separate your writing and your music?" I got (writers) Rick Moody and Jonathan Ames to do the first one, and it just kind of gathered steam; then NPR picked it up. It is a nice way for me to marry both sides of my career, a move that's probably culminated in me dropping the name John Wesley Harding.

I just love putting on a show. I get a tremendous sense of community out of it.

The people you might lose are the people who look at a marquee and are like, "Oh, John Wesley Harding is playing. I went to see him play 20 years ago." But if they see Wesley Stace, they might make absolutely no link between those two things at all.