I've always had a tendency to push the envelope as far as it can go without hurting someone's feelings.

I think my mother was always worried about me when she was alive.

I play in bars all the time in the States, so I'm kind of used to it. I've just got off the road with the family in Australia, and I enjoyed it but it feels really good to be getting back to doing this stuff.

I've learnt to hide my tears on stage. They make people uncomfortable.

When I listen to my songs, they seem like pieces of music or art, like a painting that you look at. The reality is that, yes, when I wrote the songs upstairs or wherever, I was writing very specifically about my life or a specific subject matter that's very personal. I've never shied away from that. The vocals and the performance that come after the record, I don't think of that as confessional, but the core of the music is completely. It makes sense that people would see that as being the main thing. I guess not everyone is able to speak so candidly.

I always seem to write personal songs; that's always been my go-to thing, to write about what I'm experiencing.

I wanted to be heard myself, which is hard in a household of people who were very showy. It forced me to find myself and define a personality and a way of being different, and that's a thing that's going to help me to survive in a world of many people playing the guitar.