Influences

“Songs are like tattoos, you know I’ve been to sea before’ Joni Mitchell

I am inspired by the beautiful vocals and at times ground-breaking recordings of Emmylou Harris, by the raw vocal energy and gut-wrenching lyrics of Lucinda Williams, by the braveness and vulnerability of Beth Gibbons and the rare and ethereal sound of Portishead. The voice of Elvis Costello never ceases to make me want to lie down and surrender to its beautiful calling.

Listening to the voice of Dolores Keane always made me feel that something true and unalterable was unfolding. From Mary Black came something equally true, pure in tone and melody; from Sinead O’Connor something otherworldly, at once raw, honest, violent and soothing. From Bob Geldof, ass-kicking, rocking music that put its money where its mouth was. I’m inspired by the folk revival from the fifties on, by blues and country. Hearing Hank Williams’s voice is like a fresh awakening every time. Van Morrison speaks directly to the soul, finds his groove there and works his spell. Let the healing begin.

Johnny Cash, well I can barely even go there. His voice brings me to a different place, and it is his later American recordings that I most often revisit and find myself at home in, almost akin to being a child in those warm sing-song evenings where the night was infinite possibility and song was a democracy all of its own. Johnny’s voice reminds me of rolling thunder – rumbling, spine-tingling, exciting. How close is the lightning to where you’re standing?

Joni still reveals something fresh and lasting in every new recording, and I don’t think there’s anyone to whom I owe more in terms of inspiration. When I listen to the immediacy and singularity of records she made well over forty years ago, every strum, every chord, every harmony still goes straight to the heart.

Every generation thinks it has reinvented the world, but we only have to listen to the music of the fifties and sixties to know that our hold over any such notion is at best tenuous. What unfolds from the rock ’n’ roll revolution has all manner of inventiveness. But rock ’n’ roll paved the way. And its way too was paved, by roots, gospel, jazz, blues, country. It just comes around again, anew. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings make the best case for this of any contemporary performers I can think of and they, too, inspire me.