The only problem with conjuring people is they insist on getting paid, unlike a writer who would do a reading for nothing.

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

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

With me more than anybody it seems silly having a stage name, and there wasn't any particular difference between me and John Wesley Harding. There wasn't any need to draw that line. I just happened to draw 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.

I took the name originally as a kind of disguise because I didn't want people to know I was about to embark on a s****y musical career that would last five months. And a lot of people took funny names back then.

When I was writing this new bunch of songs, I was singing a lot lower, because they were more intimate in a way. I had to come up with a way to frame the music that was intimate.