I like to keep people around me like the guys I have on the road with me, three of them were childhood friends of mine when I was growing up in Scotland. They don't look at me any different than when we were in primary school. So it's good to keep people like that around you. I think if you surround yourself with good honest people, they will tell you what to hear when you need to hear it.
An artist is somebody that puts themselves in a room, they're a wee bit self-indulgent and you know, sink into their music and it [will] be a very personal experience. An entertainer was somebody that took their God-given talent and shared it with people. And I've always wanted to be an entertainer.
If you surround yourself with the wrong people, if you surround yourself with people that constantly tell you how great you are and never tell you the truth and just tell you what you want to hear, I would imagine it would be very easy to get above yourself.
The music business for me was never about buses and billboards you know, that was never the reason I got into the music business. The reason I wanted to get into the music business was because I genuinely, wholeheartedly love to sing. I love singing songs and telling stories and playing music, so that's why I got into the music business.
One of the biggest lessons is to keep your feet on the floor. Just keeping grounded and not really getting above yourself and always trying your best to be yourself.
I sort of just wrote the songs, the way I wanted to write them, sing them the way I wanted to sing them, perform the way I wanted to perform.
I'm a good listener, you know. My gran used to say that's why you've got two ears and one mouth. I just truly love what I do and treat it with a lot of respect and all these relationships in the music business that people talk about.