In the countryside, you're always hearing sheep, birds, tractors and farm equipment.
Ben Howard
I'm one of those artists who doesn't really believe in fame. You can be a normal person these days, you don't need celebrity appeal.
I think the most frustrating thing is when people... sometimes people are a bit lazy and they don't listen to something, and they'll just say you sound like something else and it's quite clear that you don't, I think that's frustrating.
With music you spend so much time standing on stage in front of an audience you get a false sense of your own importance. It's worth keeping that in check.
We are taught these days that being famous is more important than actually doing something.
The music you play, it's never intended for other people, so it's quite amazing dealing with stuff now, because obviously any tracks I write, a lot of folks are going to hear. It definitely plays on my mind quite a lot.
I studied to be a journalist, but I don't think I would have made a very good one. I don't have the work ethic.
I live inside my own brain, most of the time. So where I am physically doesn't really bother me - if the physical place sparks something in my imagination, then it's a good place.
I just write about myself all the time, which is a funny one, because I don't really like sharing much stuff with other people, apart from music.
I meet a lot of people who are awkward around me now. I was always embarrassed about that; the more attention I got, the less I wanted it and the more it would manifest in a physical way and I would be hunched over about it. I'm just starting to realise now that it's not my problem, it's somebody else's problem.
Just to get asked to a Ibiza Rocks is a big thing.
I've been to some kind of weird places in America. I've been to Idaho.
For me, recording was a lot about honing my guitar skills and honing my singing.
If you had told me many years ago that I'd have been headlining Longitude, or festivals like it, I would have thought it was unimaginable.
A live show is a room full of sound and people and now you have technology where people can film it and take it away and all that is lost afterwards but they have a souvenir.
I'm terrified of routine.
A lot of the bars are really nice to me now because they've heard me on the radio.
The world is a very noisy place and so I don't need to shout about things. There are so many people shouting and a lot of people get lost in it.
You realise that people do things differently to each other and, more and more, I realise that there's no right or wrong. You can be a pop star and singing cabaret, and the entertainment of it is your flamboyance, it is your attitude.
You have to write songs for yourself and not worry about what other people are going to say or think about it. But ultimately it does go out to a lot of people and it will make its way into their lives, and that's really special.
Loud sounds are everywhere.
Songs became little time periods of my life, little tales from certain periods, and you build these kingdoms and memories... they're all little personal relationships and places that I've stored in my head.
I don't know if I'm particularly shy.
We were selling out venues, not just in London but also major cities in France and Germany before labels had even noticed what we were doing.
I like slightly obscure places, where the waves may not be world class, but you can tie some culture in with your surf trip.
I have problems with guitars, I hammer away at it sometimes and I also do little intimate picks, I'm always looking at new guitars and little extra tweaks and stuff, I like to mix it up a bit.
I'm not very good at speeches.
It's the bane of my life and my existence, people telling me to be a little more succinct with what I write.
I think it's important to find your own voice in your own space.
I am really opinionated when I want to be but I'm just not loud.
It's hard on the road, you don't get too much time to sit down and focus.
I get really angsty if I've got songs building up and I haven't gotten them recorded.
New York is one of my favorite places in the world, Brooklyn especially.
I've been going to Ibiza all my life really, since I was a kid.
We'd get residencies in the local pubs. It was just an excuse to have a free tab at the bar, and then at some point people started chucking me a few quid for it. There was no game plan to any of it.
I think there are definitely positives when you go back to the familiar, because it's something you don't have to think about when you know the place. But sometimes on the other hand, it can be quite unchallenging.
To have a sort of career in music still kind of freaks me out every now and then.
In my late teens, I fell out of love with music - you know how kids are, when you're encouraged to do something, you rebel. But then I picked it back up again.
It's so bizarre, being in the rolling water, but I like how insignificant it makes me feel, that's a good head space to be in.
There was no grand scheme, no big push, there are things I would have done differently now but you make decisions on the hop and it takes you where you are.
John Martyn is my biggest hero. My mom got me into his music when I was a kid. I've looked up to him more than anyone as a songwriter. And Bert Jansch is one of the pillars of acoustic music, the holy grail.
When you first sit down to write songs, you have to be selfish.
Surfing and music have always been two separate sides of my life. I'm quite a fun-loving person most of the time, but I feel like I always get the serious side out when I'm playing music, and then I have fun the rest of the time when I get in the sea.
I enjoy the sea more than I enjoy surfing.
I'm not prolific, I go over stuff and it goes for me and sometimes against me. I'm annoyed that I don't do enough stuff off-the-cuff. It's a difficult thing to do something quickly and stand behind it.
I've surfed on Lake Michigan.
In England, it's usually cold. So surfing is more of an adventure where you're floating around in a big, dark, stormy sea rather than the California notion of girls in bikinis on beaches. It's really going into the fray. I like it because it gives you the extra time and space you need to think.
I went around driving myself to gigs everywhere, and eventually, people just kept coming back.
When you're playing guitar, it's the tiny little nuances that make the difference. For me, obviously, tunings is a huge one.
Coming from the U.K., you realize how quiet England is, and as soon as you get to America, it's really big and brash and loud out here, and South by Southwest was the epitome of that.
