If they'd said, Do you want to be John Wesley Harding or Wesley Stace in 25 years' time? I would have said Wesley Stace, but I wasn't to know.

When I was writing this new bunch of songs, I was singing a lot lower, because they were more intimate in a way. I had to come up with a way to frame the music that was intimate.

The people you might lose are the people who look at a marquee and are like, Oh, John Wesley Harding is playing. I went to see him play 20 years ago. But if they see Wesley Stace, they might make absolutely no link between those two things at all.

A friend of mine pointed out to me, Why do you separate your writing and your music? I got (writers) Rick Moody and Jonathan Ames to do the first one, and it just kind of gathered steam then NPR picked it up. It is a nice way for me to marry both sides of my career, a move that's probably culminated in me dropping the name John Wesley Harding.

I do find that most fans are aware of my writing career and have known my real name for many years.

There's nothing I like more than a writer who can sing, or a musician who has a book out.

I just love putting on a show. I get a tremendous sense of community out of it.

The only problem with conjuring people is they insist on getting paid, unlike a writer who would do a reading for nothing.

Novels may have taken care of the emotional business for me, which has allowed music to be more emotional for me.