I guess I would call my music 'blues punk.' There's a lot of influences.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.
I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.
As a songwriter, oddly enough, my influences were people like Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and Buddy Holly. Some psychedelic stuff, too.
When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.
I always had influences musically with punk, and then growing up, I dyed my hair every color. I did the dip-dye blue, before anybody was dip-dyeing their hair. And streaks of pinks and purples and whatnot.
My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
You don't just have to be influenced by rock, or goth, anymore. It's okay to say, 'My influences are Tin Pan music from Bali and Rihanna.' There are still so many combinations that haven't been done yet.
My biggest influences were 1980s punk and metal. Metallica were my biggest influence because they were good at everything - riffs, energy - but with such an ear for melody, it was hard not to get pulled into it and become a fanatic.
I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.