I have spent a lot of time out in Australia, and so I have a good little fan base out there.
Before it happened to me, I'd look at other people who had become really successful and think, 'What a dream. That must be absolutely everything they ever wanted.' When it does happen to you, you realize yes, it's incredible. But it also comes with a bit of a weird aftertaste.
I think Passenger is a bit of an ambiguous thing because in the past, it's been a band, or it's been just me, or a duo or whatever, but I kind of like that as well. I think it's whatever that I'm doing with whoever I'm doing it with!
Busking taught me so much on so many levels, not just about being a musician or writing songs - actually about growing up and being a human!
I try and put myself in other peoples eyes, as I dont feel I've got anything new to say about myself at 23.
I dropped out of college and started gigging around Brighton.
Finally I'd found this way where I didn't need a record label; I didn't need to wait for some phone call to tell me, 'Go and do it'. It's like, I'm going to get up with a bag of CDs and an amp and my guitar and make it happen for myself. That was such a liberating feeling, and I think it was the start of everything.
We plan tours months in advance, and you leave a few days off here and there where you feel you'll be tired after some shows, but if other opportunities keep coming in, those days get swallowed very quickly, and it's an impossibility to get this stuff right.
I still have the mentality of a street musician, because I was one for five years. Every opportunity that comes my way, I feel like, 'Absolutely, let's do this.' Sometimes, it's to my detriment. But I don't think you become successful by not saying yes to opportunities.
Ed Sheeran is a good mate of mine, and he just flies around the place doing every single bit of promo or gig or interview, and it's no wonder that when you combine that with immense talent that he's playing in stadiums and arenas around the world.
I learned classical guitar as a kid at about 7 or 8 years old. When I was about 14, I started dabbling in songwriting. That's when I got into the folky singer-songwriter style.
To be honest, busking was a massive part of becoming aware of homelessness. I used to run into a lot of 'Big Issue' sellers and a lot of people on the street. It really opened my eyes to the kind of life that they live and the options that are open for them - or not, actually.
The big thing is I'm not with a major label. I've been independent since the get-go, and I've been very lucky to get some good advice on keeping hold of copyright and that kind of stuff.
If you go back to early folk, it's all storytelling; that's exactly what it is: some guy telling a story in a pub to 50 people with a guitar, you know.
America is a funny place; it's a land of extremes, I think. There's fantastic, and there's gobsmackingly dreadful. In every realm you could imagine, they do extremes very well or badly, depending on how you look at it.
I think we're all survivors, to be honest. I mean, some of us more than others - some of us have to survive far more horrendous things than others. It's all relative: whatever your experience is.
Every time you go in to make a record with the same group of musicians, the communication gets better and better. You've got that joint experience, and you learn with every single one that you have on top of that.
When I sat down with all the songs before recording, I realised I'd written a few songs specifically about places in America - there was this song about Detroit and another about Yellowstone National Park. My dad is actually American, so I wrote another song about that side of my family.
'Heart on Fire' didn't do as well as the last record in most territories, but South Africa is one of the places it did really well.
I think, and I don't know if it's because of 'Searching for Sugar Man,' but South Africans seem to not have to go with what's popular but what they like, and that's refreshing.
