I’ve always wanted to be a ukulele player, but I started learning bass guitar when I was four, so I’ve always admired the instrument. I’ve learned to play it myself and play it in clubs and so on. I’ve actually been writing songs and performing the ukulele for as long as I’ve ever been around.
What do your children listen to on their ipod/iphone?
It’s like the first thing that comes out of my ear and it just sort of starts swirling around. My son is about ten so he’s sort of been hearing a lot of pop and country and pop punk, and so on. And my daughter… she’s about six, and she likes a bit more indie pop, a bit more stuff from L.A. I can’t really describe it, but it feels kind of like… you know I’ve got a little bit of love and hate for certain music. I’ll say that about everything, so I think if I could go back to when I was younger, I would be maybe more of a big fan of indie pop.
You’ve been playing with some other popular artists over the years, including David Hasselhoff and Jon Hopkins. Have you had any influence from that on your songs at all? They seem a bit more relaxed, you know…
Yeah well obviously I work very closely with David Hasselhoff, and they’re very good friends. I was really happy when he was playing the last time I played shows with them. We didn’t collaborate on the lyrics at all, apart from one or two things which he said about how he wanted me to do something about the word “fuck”. I think he was getting some kind of a kick out of that. The other thing was the fact that I was in Germany at the time, and he was in the States, so it was great timing that he decided to come and see the show.
What are your thoughts when you hear ‘Hip Hop’ on the radio?
Well obviously it’s a phrase that we’ve been using at least as long as anybody can remember, and it’s just one of those phrases that we’ve been seeing used a lot more in the last few years. It really is so catchy and catchy to all us, but really the lyrics are just sort of a little bit different from the last songs like we’ve been doing. The ‘Hip Hop’ one I was just talking about, I’d never been