Bill Withers, Van Morrison and Marvin Gaye are pioneers in popular music for the last century, and these are people who have influenced me as well, so it's pretty flattering. I've got a long way to go to reach anywhere near what those guys have done. But it's a good encouragement.

Jimi Hendrix came on TV on this documentary and it was this African-American soulful black guy, playing an electric guitar, which I'd just started. And it just blew my head off. I had like an afro at the time, too. It was a bit all over the place. And it wasn't a thing to have an afro. No, that's kind of quite old school. You're supposed to have like a neatly cut shaped up haircut.

Finding out that Ray Charles sang country songs but it sounded as soulful as any rhythm and blues record that kind of opened up my horizons for what songwriting was and what singers I could listen to.

It's annoying when you've got a guitar and you're working on music and then you have to go and do the shopping or someone calls your mobile and you get distracted or you have to go out and do something. So it's nice to just concentrate on it one hundred percent and give your all to it.

The worst thing for a singer/songwriter is to run out of songs.

By that point, I was about 12, 13 years old. I was this young black kid into rock music, which was kind of strange. People would always assume I'd be into like more modern R&B, which is a stereotype, but that was kind of what was expected. And I had all these guitar magazines of all these musicians that didn't look like me. So I assumed Jimmi Hendrix was one of those.

I love grooves and dance music, but I like the feeling behind songs too.