My music career began in school but got firm and strong after I had completed and put in much effort in to building it.

When I was fifteen, I became a professional musician. I got involved with people and did certain things which led me to start making records and touring. And leaving Belfast and going to London and America, one thing led to another and I got caught up in the life that I'm living now...I was very young and i followed something. (1993)

When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else.

I'm a writer who performs. And I mean, I'm basically a writer. I've been doing it since I was 16. … For me, the balance between the two, the writing -- a year, two years, whatever it takes to do an album, and then you've had enough of writing and thinking and being introspective and all of that kind of stuff, and you want to get out on the road and you want to, you know, get into the physicality of performing.

Music was my original interest. But when I was studying in the United States, I had to select another subject in addition to my main line. That was what landed me in drama. But I found that in dram I was also in music because I could produce plays with a musical background and I could use music for the mood. So it was through music that I got into writing.

I always felt that there had to be much more [than] just… shaking it, you know, eternally. Or just making music. Or more even than the pure enjoyment of entertaining someone – being on stage, which is a tremendous rush of adrenaline. But there had to be something else to my life. And I feel that with this work that I do, that’s how my life gets fulfilled. And how I find a purpose to my own existence. And I do feel that music is the platform. It’s become the vehicle that allows me to use my voice to speak about those issues that need urgent attention. I can take the spotlight that shines on me and shift it towards those issues that are infinitely more important than my own issues.

It's just something I felt I wanted to do at this point in my career. The opportunity availed itself, and I guess it found me at a point where I was like 'yes yes yes!' Having studied drama, the last time I was on stage was in my final year and I missed it

I became friendly with [a] bass player. . . .
He told me about this place called the Berklee College of Music, and said that you didn’t have to audition. . . . They had a summer session you could attend; that was “Come one, come all.” So I went there and it opened a lot of doors for me. First of all, the ear training — to work on your ear and learn to hear things you’d heretofore not been able to ascertain, individual instruments, chords and where they went, and remember melodies better . . . I’d just thought, either you could do it or you couldn’t. That plus learning about chord progressions and music theory, and which chords sound good going into other chords . . . that was really a revelation. . . .

So I started applying that to writing songs.
Which were all terrible. But you do it enough, and you get better at it.

But when I see the stories that I have stopped music, I just laugh because before I got married, I went to school. Will you say I stopped music to go to school?.

I want to grow as an artist and I'm taking a step out, I want my music to mature.

For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.

I'm seventeen now so I've grown in a lot of ways, artistically and vocally.