I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

But huge photographs of dead bodies are slightly different. I couldn't find much humor there.

You shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together.

I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you.

I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.