Passenger
Every time you go in to make a record with the same group of musicians, the communication gets better and better. You've got that joint experience, and you learn with every single one that you have on top of that.Collection: Communication
I've spent the last 10 years constantly touring and haven't had much reason to stick around anywhere. I'm 34 now, and I've got a girlfriend and a house and two cats. I don't want to run away; I like where I'm at.
I think, after 'Let Her Go,' I wanted to show people that I don't just write really sad love songs about my ex-girlfriend: that there's another side to Passenger as well that's a bit more up-tempo and more inclined to social commentary.
What I love is when I play gigs, it's just me and a guitar - very simple, very direct and intimate, and you hear every lyric, and you hear every detail.
All I really want is for people to really get what I do and connect with the songs and find meaning in them.
Busking is the essence of what I do. It's made everything possible.
I can find myself in a situation where, by the time I'm releasing an album, I have the next one written. It is a bit old school.
You have to play to your strengths, and my strength is the amount of content I create.
If you can write a catchy melody and a song that captures people around the world, what better thing to do? Other than 'Let Her Go,' I haven't managed to do that. And that's fine by me.
I can play the main stage at the Newport Folk Festival in front of 10,000 people and do all the gigs and stuff I want to do. Then I can go home and get toilet paper on a Sunday morning and not get hassled.
When I wrote 'Let Her Go,' it's not like I was doing anything different. I was just writing a song as I would any other day of the year; it just so happened that this one resonated with people.
I don't think I've ever really fitted into the industry and the scene. I feel like I've always been on the cusp.
I think expectations are sometimes dangerous things. I think the only thing you can be sure of is that it won't go to plan. I think that's the only thing that's definite.
I think whenever I've thought something might go well, it hasn't, and when I've thought, 'Oh yeah, just chuck it out there,' that's when it kicks off, so now, I don't claim to understand anything.
I'd get a train to some town and wander about to find a decent spot. Sometimes I'd play for three hours; sometimes I'd get moved on after three songs.
Some people expect me to have changed overnight because of one big song.
For me, it's always just about playing the song and recording it and giving it what it needs as a song.
I think you're in trouble if you start chasing what you've done in the past. You always need to move on and look forward and do something new.
I've got friends and my family and people who've been around for years and years and years. And those people are never in doubt: They'd be my friend whether I was a homeless dude, or I had a hit single.
You see a lot of bands and a lot of artists making that mistake: They become successful for doing something, and then they change everything. They change the people; they change the approach. And then, all of a sudden, almost the essence of what you do is gone.
I started busking when I was 24. I was living with Mom and Dad. I'd broken up with my girlfriend and didn't know what I was doing with my life, and I thought, 'Well, this is the last shot - I'm going busking, and let's see what happens.'
I'm so lucky to not have to busk anymore, but I realized as soon as I didn't need to do it that I really missed it.
Its pretty humbling, because I go back to the places where I used to play for 13 people, and now there's 1,500.
Maybe when I was a kid, when you have those crazy dreams about what music is going to be like - a string of No. 1 hits, a limo, and a fairground in your back garden - and then you start as a musician, and you realize very, very quickly, that's not how things work. So I just let go of all that stuff.
My dad's from New Jersey, so I used to go to America a lot. I feel like it is a second home.
I write wherever I am. It helps that the writing process, for me, is a lone-wolf mission.
I know Ed Sheeran writes with a bunch of fantastic writers, but for me, it's quite difficult to be that honest with other people.
I think you've got to be careful with social media. You can get addicted to the buzz of people liking and commenting. It's exhausting.
I think some sing-songwriter music can just be very serious - after an hour and a half of it, you are exhausted - so I try and give it light and shade.
I have spent a lot of time out in Australia, and so I have a good little fan base out there.
Sometimes supporting is difficult because a lot of people go to a gig to see the main act and to have a beer and a chat with their mates, so a lot of the time, even if you were John Lennon, would not listen to you.
Some songs take months to get right, but 'Let Her Go' was so easy. I was no more pleased with it than any other song I'd written.
Before it happened to me, I'd look at other people who had become really successful and think, 'What a dream. That must be absolutely everything they ever wanted.' When it does happen to you, you realize yes, it's incredible. But it also comes with a bit of a weird aftertaste.
I'm very much of that old-school mentality of believing that if it works with an acoustic guitar and a vocal, then it should work within any format - and especially when most of my live work is just guitar and vocals, so it really does have to work with only that.
I'd say 99 per cent of the time I write on my own, just with my guitar, and then it's trying to figure out what it needs in a production sense.
I think Passenger is a bit of an ambiguous thing because in the past, it's been a band, or it's been just me, or a duo or whatever, but I kind of like that as well. I think it's whatever that I'm doing with whoever I'm doing it with!
Busking taught me so much on so many levels, not just about being a musician or writing songs - actually about growing up and being a human!
I try and put myself in other peoples eyes, as I dont feel I've got anything new to say about myself at 23.
I dropped out of college and started gigging around Brighton.
Finally I'd found this way where I didn't need a record label; I didn't need to wait for some phone call to tell me, 'Go and do it'. It's like, I'm going to get up with a bag of CDs and an amp and my guitar and make it happen for myself. That was such a liberating feeling, and I think it was the start of everything.
I can headline a festival and then literally, 10 minutes later, be walking around, and nobody notices.
I think I just look extremely normal, like just a sort of fairly trendy bearded bloke. Whereas Ed, you'd know it's Ed Sheeran from space, you know; you can see him from anywhere.
People sometimes come up to me, and it's like they just want to capture Passenger. I feel like Pikachu. Sometimes, in the more sort of depressing moments, it feels like it's not about the music, it's just about the photo, and that really worries me.
I write so much and I release so much music that I think I'm less precious about that stuff than a lot of people.
We plan tours months in advance, and you leave a few days off here and there where you feel you'll be tired after some shows, but if other opportunities keep coming in, those days get swallowed very quickly, and it's an impossibility to get this stuff right.
I still have the mentality of a street musician, because I was one for five years. Every opportunity that comes my way, I feel like, 'Absolutely, let's do this.' Sometimes, it's to my detriment. But I don't think you become successful by not saying yes to opportunities.
Ed Sheeran is a good mate of mine, and he just flies around the place doing every single bit of promo or gig or interview, and it's no wonder that when you combine that with immense talent that he's playing in stadiums and arenas around the world.
I learned classical guitar as a kid at about 7 or 8 years old. When I was about 14, I started dabbling in songwriting. That's when I got into the folky singer-songwriter style.
I dropped out of school at 17 'cause all I wanted to do was play music. I had odd jobs on the side of gigging until I turned 22, when I was lucky to start doing this full time.
I believe it's important to put all of your energy into what you're doing rather than doing an office job and trying to muster up energy for music. It's been a real blessing to play music full time.