Even when I do get discouraged — and let's face it music, both as a hobby and a business, can be unfairly discouraging — I'll see things, like someone playing a guitar on TV and then I get this feeling inside like "Yeah, yeah... this is what you do."

So tell me about your debut solo album.

Well, after my old band had broken up, I had some songs that I'd been working on and decided to make some acoustic demos. I was doing them with an excellent local engineer named Viktor Kray. As we were going along, I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with them.

I thought there was an album in there somewhere, but wasn't really sure what kind, where I would make it, or with who. Some had a country feel, some sounded good acoustic, some you could hear potential with a band but I really had no direction. I had applied for a job in New York City, but didn't have interest in it. I had booked a trip to Nashville to check out that town, but had to cancel. I had these demos and really wasn't sure what to do with them.

I was online one day and saw an ad on Craigslist for a producer and musician who had just moved here from London and was looking for local talent to work with. I answered the ad and we went back and forth on email a bit. It turned out that it was Tim Bradshaw. He was in David Gray's band and also had been in the band Dogs Eye View. He was on a break between the recording of Gray's album and their next tour and was looking for a project.

I have to admit, I was definitely intimidated by the fact that here was a guy who had been involved in making "real" records. All I had done was a home-made album with my old band and some acoustic demos. But the more we spoke and got to know each other it quickly became clear that it just felt right, for both of us, I think. We had similar ideas as to how we liked to work and, if I may say, we're both very easy to work with.

The title of your debut album is Schoolbus Window Paper Heart, where does that come from?

It’s a line from the opening track on the record "White Feather". That song, which I think is pretty much one of the only very clear songs on the album, was written in the few days after 9/11 and is about the events of that day. Basically, from the perspective of someone like myself… someone who was not directly affected — in that I didn't know anyone involved — but who was still deeply affected nonetheless.