Music Q&A:
Willy Porter

What informs your music and songwriting?
Life and the way people try to live it. I try to be sympathetic to the failures and mistakes we all make. I like characters and how they can be developed in a four-minute song.

How have you evolved as an artist over the years?
That’s difficult to measure. I hope I’m a better musician overall. I have realised there is a lot more to life than the music. I think that has in turn helped the music a lot.

What are you up to at the moment artistically?
I’m digging into the guitar again and wood-shedding. The guitar has always been the key to the highway of songs for me.

What’s on your rider?
Carrot juice! Water. A towel.

Tell us your most embarrassing or surreal experience.
I was announced from backstage at a beautiful theatre in front of several thousand people. As the curtain opened, I was playing a very aggressive and loud guitar riff. Just when I stepped up to the microphone to deliver the first line of the song, I didn’t realise the guitar cable was stuck around my amp base. It pulled out of the guitar rather like “guitarus interuptus”. Hilarious now. The audience thought it was scripted, but I just about pooped my tights.

What song do you wish you’d written?
Somewhere Over the Rainbow

What’s your worst lyric?
I’ll leave that for someone else to define. I’m generally all right with everything I’ve said on my recordings.