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" If you're trying to do something wholly new, it's hard to fully trust it. But if you use forms that have come before, it lends your music weight and authority. It's also a way to acknowledge that it's not just you who's feeling these things. The emotions are coming through you from a whole history. "

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" The world that I know and the world that I come from is from the arts, and my wife's an artist, and I've been a musician since I left college, and there's tons of musicians I'd love to play. "

Johnny Flynn

Musicians

College

Love

" We had no money, my dad was out of work a lot, and we never owned a house. It was very hand-to-mouth. "

" I fell in love with the legend of Paul Robeson as a kid. My dad would tell me all these amazing stories about his life and, bizarrely, ended up singing to Robeson on his deathbed. "

" I always love going to New York. "

" If you're in a garage band, it's about being better than the band in the next-door garage. But in the folk tradition, it's more a vibe of sharing. "

" Loads of verses don't make it into the finished song. "

" I'm often the one in my gang of friends who's worried about how we're going to get from A to B. I'm the one running around saying, 'Is somebody going to do something about it?' Everyone else is bit more chilled. "

" I imagine that, for most people, acting isn't something they think is a viable option, whereas for me, it was the most viable option. No adults around me knew how to do anything else. "

Johnny Flynn

Think

Most

" My thing about demos is that you usually prefer them to the finished thing. "

" I actually do bits of my writing in sort of incidental spaces - when I'm traveling on the Tube or on a bus. More often than not, it's a reaction to how you feel about something, and if you're sitting down and concentrating on, 'I must write something,' then you can't have a truthful reaction. "

" I like really bad puns - proper, red-top, nasty puns - I find them funny. "

" I sometimes self-edit when it comes to auditions and go, 'They're not going to cast me, so I'm not going to do it.' "

Johnny Flynn

Going

Sometimes

" I've been cast in a lot of comedies. I've done things like multi-cam sitcoms: you know, 'Seinfeld' type... not as good as 'Seinfeld,' but that kind of thing. I love that stuff. "

" I think the truest things come from silence, but everything's always so clogged up with noise. If everything falls away, and you can truly listen to someone, giving them yourself and generosity, you can truly lose yourself in what they're saying. Like, not impose your ideas on what they're saying, but really tune into them. "

" I had to learn how to work in a studio at first because it's a totally different creative environment to the 'bedroom recordings' I'd done before, where I could translate my own ideas without having to explain them to anyone. "

" I'm not a fan of taking too long in the studio. I always do one vocal take and jump out of the control room, and people push me back in... It's a real turn-off to hear things that are too polished. I feel like I've almost fought for the right to be that kind of musician - we used to be on a major label, and now we're on an indie. "

Johnny Flynn

Control

Long

" Our job as actors is to invent the things that bridge ourselves with the characters, so you have to build something if it's not there - you try and learn what makes people behave in a certain way. "

" Diane Cluck is part of the anti-folk movement in New York. She's got a really haunting voice, and she usually sings in the pentatonic scale. "

" I try and stay in my right brain as much as I can, but my left takes over. "

" It's great being an actor and being part of a play or a film where there's usually quite a big group of people who are collaborating, and your job is really to fit in and share that energy. With music, because I write the songs, it's a broader, more abstract process. "

" In my mind, there's usually a fairly definitive kind of narrative when I write. But I don't want to enforce that on other people. I think that's why I like using metaphor so much. "

" I like the idea of letting the music do its own work and the stories being more expressionful - if that's a word - in people's imagination. I've just got a thing about people and songs telling you how you should feel. "

" The truth is there's always a hum of people playing folk music in cities. "

" Weirdly, my dad didn't want me to become an actor, he was always quite resistant to it. He told me as much many times. That just made it more attractive to me. "

Johnny Flynn

Actor

Always

" I guess I started writing poetry and stuff and then decided to set it to music. "

" I just said, casually, 'You know, I passed up on auditioning for Einstein.' And my friend was like, 'You idiot, you have to do it!' She made me do it. I sent the tapes off assuming that somebody would say, 'Ha ha, very funny.' "

Johnny Flynn

Funny

Know

" I definitely asked too many questions of my teachers and was probably a bit facetious at times. "

" My dad was an actor, and he always said that work was work; you can't turn your nose up at it. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, and he had this real work ethic, which I inherited. "

" When I was young, I was being pushed, against my will, towards becoming a classical musician. I had music scholarships; I had to play the violin and do orchestra practice and that sort of stuff. That meant I didn't get to do any school plays. I desperately wanted to do that. "

" When I first moved to London, there was talk of a folk revival, with annoying names like nu-folk that made me feel slightly ill. "

Johnny Flynn

Talk

Names