I'd been performing in bands since I was 12 which represented, at that point, about 16 years of playing music.

Any artist is an instrument-and that's exactly why you can't do it all the time. You can only do it when it's happening, when it's coming through. No matter how much you may want to do it, if it's not happening then it's simply not happening.

My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing.

I like to see people reaching back for the roots and for the reason why. Not intellectually, but just for the gut feeling of what it's all about.

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that.

There's always got to be a struggle. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else. If there is, tell me about it.

The job of the jazz people is to take it as far as it will go and that's what they're doing. But in the process of taking it out there, there has to be some times when they're not getting it right. It all depends on what you dig. I personally don't think the fusion of jazz with the heaviness of rock is working.