I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.
I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.
When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.
I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.
The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport.
I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.
My records do not require a lot of thought of 'What is this?' and 'What is that?' That would be too contrived for me.
You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.
I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity.
My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.
A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception.
Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.
My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing.
You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.
For a long time, I couldn't actually deal with playing concerts; it was a totally alien concept to me, 'cause I was used to playing in clubs and dance halls.
There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.
I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!
Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach.
These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.
I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.
