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.
Passenger
I've played in some pretty weird settings; busking puts you in all kinds of situations. I can tell you the most depressing gig I've played was in the North of England. At that time, I was playing with a band. We drove 7 or 8 hours to Carlisle to play a 600 - 700 capacity venue - 9 people showed up.
I'm lucky in the sense that I can write wherever I am - on the bus, in the hotel room, backstage, sitting at home.
You have to play to your strengths, and my strength is the amount of content I create.
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.
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, and I don't know if it's because of 'Searching for Sugar Man,' but South Africans seem to not have to go with what's popular but what they like, and that's refreshing.
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'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.
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 write so much and I release so much music that I think I'm less precious about that stuff than a lot of people.
I spent my life on the road touring, and a lot of the songs are written in tour buses and hotel rooms.
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 sat down with all the songs before recording, I realised I'd written a few songs specifically about places in America - there was this song about Detroit and another about Yellowstone National Park. My dad is actually American, so I wrote another song about that side of my family.
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.
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.
If you go back to early folk, it's all storytelling; that's exactly what it is: some guy telling a story in a pub to 50 people with a guitar, you know.
To be honest, busking was a massive part of becoming aware of homelessness. I used to run into a lot of 'Big Issue' sellers and a lot of people on the street. It really opened my eyes to the kind of life that they live and the options that are open for them - or not, actually.
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.
I think we're all survivors, to be honest. I mean, some of us more than others - some of us have to survive far more horrendous things than others. It's all relative: whatever your experience is.
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.
The big thing is I'm not with a major label. I've been independent since the get-go, and I've been very lucky to get some good advice on keeping hold of copyright and that kind of stuff.
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 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.
If you're a priority artist, then you get an amazing amount of exposure and money thrown. If you are more niche, then it's not necessarily the way forward. If you want Instagram followers and fame, then the major labels are still really great for that.
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 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.
I love that - you get everything from seven-year-olds to 87-year-olds at Passenger gigs.
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.
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 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 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.
I've grown up on American songwriters my whole life - listening to Paul Simon and Bob Dylan and people like John Prine - you know, classic, real songwriters. They've been the lion's share of what I've really focused on as a writer and as influences, too.
Its pretty humbling, because I go back to the places where I used to play for 13 people, and now there's 1,500.
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 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.
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.
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 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.'
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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 have spent a lot of time out in Australia, and so I have a good little fan base out there.
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.
