If I'm not relaxed on stage, I'm tense, and if I'm tense, it really isn't good - for anyone."Slowly, and with much pain written upon his face, he endeavours to explain. If he is not feeling in the mood to perform - and this can strike him 10 minutes before stage time - he will do whatever he can to separate himself from the audience (hence his occasional habit of performing in darkness). He deflects any sign of exuberant fan worship by turning his back on them, and woe betide anyone fool enough to start taking photographs."We all have our breaking points, don't we?" he reasons "And I have mine. What passes for much of the man's conversational patter is taken up with musings on money. He didn't used to have much of it; now, after almost half-a-million album sales, he does."I've been in the position many times in my life where I either filled my fuel tank with gas or my belly with food," he says, "and so to suddenly be able to afford to live - well, that's pretty special I'm grateful for it. Music was by now in his blood.In 2003, he landed himself a small record deal. Trouble was released the following year and, cautiously buoyed by comparatively healthy sales, he dared to give up the day job, convinced he could finally afford to do so.

These would prove mostly wretched experiences, blighted by "poor lighting and terrible sound, every night like Russian roulette; I hated it." But he also knew he had to do it. I did not go to work that day; I went to the record store and sought out that album [Stills Alone]. I listened to it, and was transformed."By 1999, he was writing and recording his own music, sending demo tapes out to local venues in order to secure gigs. One morning, he awoke to his clock radio playing a song called "Tree Top Flyer" by Stephen Stills.

It stopped him in his tracks: "I just sat up in bed and listened Something about that song hit me. (Apparently the line "I'll lay down this bottle of wine if you'll just be kind to me" is too painful to re-live), while the latter is more about despair than anything else ("Cocaine flame in my bloodstream," he yowls, "I still don't know what love means".)It was while working at the shoe factory that he had what has since been described as his "epiphany". The former, he tells me now, is something he will never play again. Under what circumstances he met his wife, and when, we will never know, at least if the singer himself has anything to do with it. There are few clues on his album, and aside from the jubilant hosanna of the song "Trouble", the tracks named after women ("Hannah" and "Jolene") hardly qualify as love songs. He did various part-time jobs, he dabbled in carpentry, and eventually settled in New Hampshire where he worked for several years in a shoe factory.