James Vincent McMorrow

“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.”

“I don't know about folk music. I play guitar, so there's a feeling I make folk music.”

“I like working by myself.”

“My favorite records are not easy - they're not records that reveal everything to you the first time out.”

“I didn't really learn how to play guitar until I was in college.”

“The idea of trying to predict what people will or won't respond to is risky.”

“I'm mostly a keep-to-myself kind of guy, but you slowly find yourself getting folded into the musical tapestry.”

“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.”

“I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.”

“I don't function well in certain aspects of society, and you can read into that what you will.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 traveled quite a lot and become a coffee nut.”

“I grew up in a place called Malahide, which is by the water and is beautifully quiet, leafy, and part serene.”

“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?”

“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.”

“I have no interest in making music that's built for an antique shop.”

“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.”

“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.”