A few months before going on stage, there came a time when I wanted fire walkers, jugglers and a dozen dancers out there with me — anything to keep the audiences’ attention! I kept wondering if this kind of solo voice concert could possibly work… that’s when I needed all my courage to stick to the initial vision.

On stage, alone, and with only my voice to carry me, sometimes my own conscious and active ‘waiting’ in a performance is rewarded by an incredible feeling. It’s as if an outside influence has entered me, sound is channelled through my body like a flute and there’s no sensation in my throat.

If I am lucky, this connection with something that feels like a higher intelligence happens when I’m writing too. I am not in charge as far as my albums are concerned. I am kept in line by these songs. They pour out of my throat with far more levels of meaning in them than I could possibly cobble together out of my own consciousness, or than I can see at the time. I have learned to simply prepare well and then get out of the way of the process, in the hope that it will happen. That is why a lack of record company interference is so important to me.

I think of my albums as living entities — as personalities in their own right. So I’m not about to sit back and let something in a way as innocent and defenceless as my recordings come through and be manipulated away from their full potential for the sake of simply making money. Instead, I protect them through my publishing and production companies, and by working very closely with Real World. I am able to do this because I’ve never taken on a manager, I negotiate my own recording contracts, I own my own recordings and currently lease them for a limited period only. Each of the trilogy albums has been signed to Real World as a one-off, and only once I’d completed the final mixes and was satisfied with the result.

Throughout this period Real World have been very brave about letting me get on with and supporting me in my own musical vision. I chose them because they were, and have continued to be, willing to let me maintain my previously found creative and business control. But they have also enhanced and expanded all aspects of quality control and helped my music find new audiences worldwide.

The have let me become part of the family at Real World and WOMAD and this, certainly for me, is not a factor to be underestimated, coming as I had done from the tiny and isolated Indipop label (God bless ‘em!) and very much ‘in from out of the cold.’ My move in 1991 to live in Glastonbury, only a short drive from Real World, has helped me find a new sense of spiritual and musical home that has given me the confidence to attempt more and more.

If I am lucky, this connection with something that feels like a higher intelligence happens when I’m writing too. I am not in charge as far as my albums are concerned. I am kept in line by these songs. They pour out of my throat with far more levels of meaning in them than I could possibly cobble together out of my own consciousness, or than I can see at the time. I have learned to simply prepare well and then get out of the way of the process, in the hope that it will happen. That is why a lack of record company interference is so important to me.