Guitar comes more out of its limitations for me, like putting it in a weird tuning and then just go places.

When I do older folk songs, I'm not doing them because they're old. I have no interest in reviving or continuing a tradition. I'm just doing them because they're great songs.

I like to carry around extremely pretentious books, and I don't know if I can read them, but if I hold them near me, it imbues me with a sense of powerful intelligence.

I'm not somebody that has an encyclopedic knowledge of ballads and could sit around a fire and sing songs for three hours. I basically only know the songs that I've taken on and reworked and recorded.

I'm not really a folk singer, but I love the music and there's certain lines that will get just stuck in my head, and they seem to be stuck there for a reason, and I start singing them.

If I said who I was influenced by, it would be really weird and pretentious because it would be people who have nothing to do with what I do. From a listening perspective, there's just something in their playing that I'm inspired by.

Guitar comes more out of its limitations for me, like putting it in a weird tuning and then just go places.