My mother was a champion Irish dancer and singer and most of my family were musical, particularly in Irish dancing. Music is all about spewing out your emotions. A mixture of a good tune and a good beat and everyone playing their guts out and something that grabs people's attention.

There's an art to playing live. It's a great feeling. It's indescribable. It's what I love. I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it.

What I do is I'm a bandleader, frontman, entertainer.

I play Irish popular music, yeah? Calling it folk is like putting it in a box. It's a living tradition, you know?

When I'm writing a song, it gives me more actual pleasure to hear someone else sing it than do it meself.

The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks- they spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.

You can’t hate people unless you love them.