I grew up in a place called Malahide, which is by the water and is beautifully quiet, leafy, and part serene.
I remember always looking forward to listening to country music in the car with my mother, and it wasn't even something I enjoyed in the sense of music, but just being around music itself was enough.
I think it's safe to say that if you talk to anybody in Ireland, they'll have a passing knowledge of the guitar. It was something that I couldn't get away from when I was younger: guitars played in shops and parties, just everywhere.
It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do.
More often than not, changes had to be made in order for a song to make sense, and by the end of it, it would just be something different. Lyrically, I am usually fairly confused until something is finished, and then it makes perfect sense to me.
My favorite records are not easy - they're not records that reveal everything to you the first time out.
I never was the front man in any bands I played in when I was in college, and I always learned music by myself at home.
My first record was made in Termonfeckin, which is a small town on the north-east coast of Ireland. I had been in London, but it didn't click. So, at home, I didn't think about making something, just whether something could be made. There was no grand plan.
I heard of this Texas studio. The owner, Tony Rancich, wanted to fly us out for the day to see the studio. I booked it the next day. He's that rare guy that is in it purely for the love of it.
When I first saw Drake, I thought I was never going to like him based on the person that I saw on T.V. He's just so full on, and he's got the ladies' man thing, which isn't necessarily something that would resonate with me.
My mum was a big fan of E.L.O. and Elvis Costello. She used to play that, consistently, all the time when we were kids. And my dad, he would claim to be a singer... You know, he loves singing, and he used to sing a lot when he was a kid and at parties and stuff like that. So I come from a very party-musical family.
I didn't start playing music really until I was 18/19, so it was a relatively new thing. I didn't play much music in school.
I just essentially stayed at home for three years and just learned to play as many instruments as I could and listened to as many singers as I could. Like, when I got to about 19/20, I started listening to singers. I normally just listened to bands. Now I listen to a lot of old singers, not a lot of new stuff.
I'm mostly a keep-to-myself kind of guy, but you slowly find yourself getting folded into the musical tapestry.
Food in Dublin has gotten immeasurably better than it was. When I was a kid, there weren't a lot of options. Now you're overwhelmed with options.
With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.
You can batter your guitar, and it won't distort too much, which is important for me because I play with my hands a lot - I don't really play with picks.
I've got an Avalon guitar - that's the company that used to be Lowden. They come out of Ireland, and they're like these folk kind of guitars. You can pick 'em, you can strum 'em - they're quite good.
All the really good guitar players - Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or even Bert Jansch or John Martin - I love all those people. But I didn't start out thinking that I would be a guitar player. In the beginning, I played the guitar so I could sing. I mainly concentrated on my voice.
It bothers me when musicians listen to music from the '60s and try and recreate it. Those people weren't trying to recreate music from the '20s. Why do it?
You play a couple of shows, and these label guys come - and they leave halfway through a show. Then the phone calls just stop. And your heart is broken.
Sometimes my hands they don’t feel like my own; I need someone to love, I need someone to hold.Collection: Hands
I have a vision for everything that I make, but... I'm not that considerate about what I do. I do whatever is in my head and how it ends up tends to be the thing that it's supposed to be. It was never a premeditated decision.Collection: Decision
I write songs on a course of time that's comfortable for me. I would probably never write a song from start to finish in the course of a day, hell probably not even a week. My mind is always going to change and my emotional state will also change on a daily basis.Collection: Song
I want to talk about things that are tangible and real to me, but I also want to do them in a way that's poetic and artistic.Collection: Real
I approach every show from the same fundamental perspective: this is a conversation, and my job is to make people leave the show feeling like they've seen something singular. It's not about smashing someone over the head from the jump-off.Collection: Jobs
At the end of the day music is a grind. You're constantly working at it and even with playing shows as well. If your schedule isn't planned right it could really throw things off, but honestly at the end of the day its incredible being able to go to so many places.Collection: The End Of The Day
Music is really everything I know. To be honest every experience I've ever had has been brought up from music and everything I do is because of music. I don't know anything else, I think about music before I go to sleep and it just really is everything that I am.Collection: Sleep
You get one chance to make an impression and coasting through is a disservice.Collection: Chance
I feel the reasons my songs might seem dark is because of how I viewed the situations I was in and it was just something I always felt like documenting.Collection: Song
Its always important to fall back on your instincts and core beliefs and that was pretty hard for me to do but trusting in my self the way I trusted that if I were to sit at a piano for two hours and I was going learn something, that trust I'd put in myself really helped me get through it. For five to six months I just wrote songs and believed they would turn out to be things I could be proud of and be happy.Collection: Song
I really wanted to approach performing live differently than most people who just play guitar and sing.Collection: Guitar
My love of R&B and hip-hop has influenced my life not even as a musician, but generally in terms of growing up and looking to America as an inspiration.Collection: Growing Up