"This wasn’t my introduction to folk music by any means, but it was my introduction to Irish folk music that wasn’t merely The Dubliners or The Chieftains. It was Irish music that had a bit of balls and a bit of a wayward quality that came I think from those guys knowing about rock music and, generally speaking, what was going on in the UK. You could call them the first progressive folk band. They had a good way of bringing together bits of tradition, mostly Irish traditional music, with an awareness in terms of arrangements that could only come from a knowledge of other musical forms. And of course they feature what was a growing, new instrument, a non-indigenous instrument of Irish music: the bouzouki. Not the bowl-shaped Greek bouzouki but the flat-backed bouzouki that was being made by luthiers in Britain and Ireland as a more convenient, big boy’s mandolin. The bouzouki became an important part of Irish folk music and Planxty used it to great effect."

"I saw him on the Jay Leno show, and I thought 'wow, this is a good band'. It was like the Kings of Leon, southern rock, and he came on with that thing and I thought 'I wonder where this kid's from, he must be from the South somewhere'. And then when Jay Leno says 'that was great', Paolo says [adopts Scottish accent] 'thank you very much', and I thought 'he's fucking Scottish!' So it's great, but the album he did as well, that's great. I play that - there's so many great things on there. Again, it's fresh, it's different from other things, so I hope he can come up with more, because he writes as well. And Ethan John [Jones's producer for Spirit In The Room] produced the album, which I didn't know, when I heard the album. There's a jazz band thing, a traditional jazz band thing. 'Simple Things In Life', I like that, about going round to his mother's for tea, it's great. He paints a picture, you can see him do it."