Before I record for real, I know pretty much exactly how I want them to feel.

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.

When I was young, I had idols that I thought were wonderful. I wanted to be just like them.

In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life.

I do take enormous interest in what's going on. I try to see whatever I can, whenever I can.

I've so much left to explore, it's enormously exciting to me. It's a passion. I just try and get better at what I do, and I study it very hard, like it is my life degree.