I like what I like, I don't like what I don't like, and I'm very bad at toning myself down.
— James Vincent McMorrow
I'm learning on the guitar all the time.
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'm very ambitious, musically - I want to create great things, not mediocre work.
I'm mostly a keep-to-myself kind of guy, but you slowly find yourself getting folded into the musical tapestry.
I like working by myself.
I don't know if I'm attention deficit, but I certainly am easily distracted by other things.
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.
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 never was the front man in any bands I played in when I was in college, and I always learned music by myself at home.
I was never a 'sit down with a notepad and write lyrics' kind of person.
You get one chance to make an impression, and coasting through is a disservice.
I remember always looking forward to listening to country music in the car with my mother, and it wasn't even something I enjoyed in the sense of music, but just being around music itself was enough.
You play a couple of shows, and these label guys come - and they leave halfway through a show. Then the phone calls just stop. And your heart is broken.
All the really good guitar players - Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or even Bert Jansch or John Martin - I love all those people. But I didn't start out thinking that I would be a guitar player. In the beginning, I played the guitar so I could sing. I mainly concentrated on my voice.
I don't function well in certain aspects of society, and you can read into that what you will.
The idea of trying to predict what people will or won't respond to is risky.
I've traveled quite a lot and become a coffee nut.
The only thing that's ever made sense to me has been sitting in the house by myself making music.
I just essentially stayed at home for three years and just learned to play as many instruments as I could and listened to as many singers as I could. Like, when I got to about 19/20, I started listening to singers. I normally just listened to bands. Now I listen to a lot of old singers, not a lot of new stuff.
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.
You just wake up and make music.
My favorite records are not easy - they're not records that reveal everything to you the first time out.
It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do.
I didn't really learn how to play guitar until I was in college.
I have some vivid memories of walking around as a child with a cassette tape.
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?
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.
With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.
Food in Dublin has gotten immeasurably better than it was. When I was a kid, there weren't a lot of options. Now you're overwhelmed with options.
I grew up in a place called Malahide, which is by the water and is beautifully quiet, leafy, and part serene.
I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.
I didn't start playing music really until I was 18/19, so it was a relatively new thing. I didn't play much music in school.
I don't know about folk music. I play guitar, so there's a feeling I make folk music.
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.
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 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.
