Because of my interest in songwriting, I was invited to visit a friend in L.A. for songwriting sessions with him and his friends. We wrote six songs by the end of the weekend, and 'Hide Away' happened to be one of them!
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It wasn't until I wrote 'Hideaway' that I found the song I related to as an artist.
I came out to L.A. to be a songwriter and not an artist, and I'm so excited because I always secretly wanted to be an artist.
Hearing my songs in public freaks me out a bit. There was one restaurant I really liked in L.A., but I had to stop going there when they started playing my music. It felt kinda awkward.
It wasn't so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.
The whole point of music is being able to share your story. I've been songwriting for a long time, usually while on the road, as a way to get my feelings out.
A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer-songwriter have disappeared.
I try not to become friends with musicians, but life happens and dinner happens and going out happens - it becomes interwoven in L.A.
After about a year or so, I was in L.A.; I'd decided to try to get a band together out there.
We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour.
Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.