"I came across this on the way out to Hoboken to play Maxwell's, and my manager, Geoff Travis, gave it to me as a gift and we put it on the CD player in the van. I was very touched by his gift - he'd thought to give me that record, I was very moved by that. I knew Nina Simone obviously, but I'd never heard her sing like this. It just turned my head - I'm not sure how it's influenced me as a songwriter or as a musician, but again, another album of just classic songs, one after the other, and so much attitude, so much fucking fire. I think, for me, her questions, her lyrics, were just fantastic - from 'Do I Move You?' all the way through. It was a real learning curve of growing up - there's a lot of wisdom in these songs and also a lot of diversity. The music's also pretty hard-hitting: a lot of groove in there, a lot of amazing rhythm. Just an unusual, really surprising record."

"Around this time I started heading out on tour and The Gaslight Anthem really started moving. It was just after The ’59 Sound came out. That was when I started learning about the music industry and how it all works, and how insincere it all is. People pick you up and spit you out. I was taking a drive one day and I heard The Promise by Bruce Springsteen come on the radio. But it wasn’t the album version; it was just him and a piano as it appears on an album called 18 Tracks.” This song opens with the lyrics: ‘Johnny works in a factory / Billy works downtown / Terry works in a rock and roll band / Looking for that million dollar sound.’ Then towards the end of the song he says: ‘The promise was broken, I was far away from home / Sleeping in the back seat of a borrowed car.’ I remember being on tour and sleeping in the back of a car that wasn’t mine, and I heard that line and I was like, ‘I don’t know about this whole thing. I don’t know if this is right. What do I do?’ As Springsteen sings: ‘The promise is broken, you go on living / It steals something from down in your soul.’ That’s when I realised that music wasn’t about the rock star dream. It’s about connecting with people, but that’s not enough for the industry. They see you as a product and they want you to make money, and I understand that, but it’s never enough for them. They’re never satiated and they’re never satisfied. It’s a beast with a belly that will never be filled. “I’d feel a sense of dissatisfaction after every tour and I’d come home and get in my van and just drive. I’d drive around habitually for one hour playing The Promise on repeat, just to clear my head. The song made me feel like I wasn’t alone, like someone understood me. It was a huge, huge song for my development, and it always put me back in a perspective that I wasn’t alone. And even though it’s a depressing song and there’s not a lot of advice in it, it makes sense to me. I still feel good when I listen to that song."