I'm never worried about being upstaged. I love to have the best, most individual people come in and see if we hit on something.

I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren't really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins.

Country music was the music I was brought up on. It's the music that's closest to my heart and the music that speaks to me the most, and it's always been a big influence on my own songwriting.

I don't try to stop myself from becoming too personal. I just put it all out there. If anything, I try to remind myself to be as honest as possible all the time. Why hold back?

There's this bubblegum pop thing which is prevalent now that we haven't had before. People's ears are slightly de-tuned they've been exposed to this weird synthetic, implausibly upbeat, Mickey Mouse stuff which I think is just weird it's not really a human sound.

I come from a place where there's a lot of musical families.

The songs are definitely all about me. I am my favourite subject.

I used to listen to my dad a lot as a way of trying to be close to him, as well, because my parents were divorced and I didnt spend that much time with him. I used to put head phones on and listen to my dad talk and sing and kind of had a weird bonding in a way.

Even for the people in the business who are real music lovers it's really about putting things in the right boxes, and my style doesn't fit into a box.

Internet radio stations like KCRW do take you everywhere, yet thats just one of a hundred small things you have to do to succeed. It used to be, if you just got on the cover of Rolling Stone and a spotlight on The Tonight Show, that was enough.

The state of radio is not great. It's like playing the lottery. The chances of hitting are mind boggling slim.

I went to a boarding school when I was 13, and it was a very arty school, so there was an opportunity for a lot more. I joined a band and so on. We would do concerts at school, and I would play cover tunes and thought, 'This is really great.'