As the final piece in our series on David Ford, we were pleased to be able to sit down and chat with David prior to his performance Thursday night at the TLA with Rachael Yamagata and Sara Bareilles. This makes three David Ford shows in as many months that we've been able to catch, and each one has been just as enjoyable, if not more so, as the last.

David is a singer/songwriter from Eastbourne, UK and is currently touring the U.S. to promote his recently released album Songs for the Road. To see a video for his single "Go to Hell," click here.

How long have you been a musician? Is it something that's been with you since childhood or is it something you grew into as an adult?
I got into the idea of being a musician in my late teens. I was never a musician as a child, I have no musical background as such. I just kind of, at an age where you discover a lot about yourself and you kind of grow into the person that you are going to be for the rest of your life, that was just one of the things that I found was very important to me and I had a particular love for songs and how they could affect me as a listener. And you just form a relationship with music. It was important enough to me to feel like it was something that I wanted to be able to recreate—the feelings I have for music in other people, if I could possibly do that and to try to perpetuate the things that I thought were great about music further and further.

Can you talk a bit about your musical influences, whether it would be other artists or family members or any other source?
Well I come from a very non-musical family—there have been no musicians in my family for generations. My father's line are a very mathematical, analytical, engineering folk. And then my mother's side of the family is sort of more about...they're Italians, so all things that Italians like—like soccer and pizza and such. There was very little music as far as playing music, but everyone in my family has always liked and appreciated music, but kind of as a distant appreciation. So for me actually getting into music, it's kind of weird in that I think it hasn't dated particularly well but the first record that I felt passionately about was Automatic for the People by R.E.M. Some of the songs on there just seemed to, as a fifteen/sixteen year old, seemed to speak to me quite intimately—that sounds wrong—not in that sense, I was in no way violated by that record. But it felt like it was one of the first times that I was emotionally connected to a record. And so since then that's always been my yardstick. The thing that I want to do is enjoy music on a deep personal emotional level. And that's still the music that I enjoy. These days I'm crazy about Tom Waits records. They're all good in whatever way and the man's the greatest lyric writer that's ever been. That's a constant thing—the pursuit of the perfect lyric and the ultimate way to turn a phrase to try to put across meaning in a tasteful and sensitive fashion.

When you are in pursuit of that perfect lyric, do you ever feel creatively blocked? And if you do get that way how do you find that you can unblock yourself and move past it?
I write in a particular way and the way that I write is to not try to write and that way I never feel blocked because I'm never attempting to write songs. Sometimes I'll go months without writing anything and then sometimes I can write four or five songs in a week. But generally I just ignore the process and let it find me whenever inspiration strikes. Then I'm ready to receive it, but in the meantime I don't go looking for it. So I guess you could say that I spend my entire life in a state of writer's block because I'm not writing all the time. It's something I've never done is to try and see songwriting as a job or something that you can spend time doing and by working at it you can get good results. I've found that by ignoring the process entirely and just trying to do it by accident always comes up with the best stuff for me because if you only work when you feel truly inspired then hopefully what you come up with is in some way inspiration.

How do you respond to critics who might say that your music has an indignant or somewhat angry tone to it?
I think they can fuck off.

Great answer! We've seen your intriguing live performances before and are continually amazed at your skill, but were wondering if you ever work with other musicians or are you strictly solo?
In England I work with other musicians a lot but they're all over there and I don't know anyone in America yet, so hopefully—and also if we can be so filthy as to talk about raw finances, it's kind of expensive to tour the band—they need paying, they need accommodation, you need to travel around with them and stuff. Maybe they might let me do that if I ever sell records in this country. But for the time being it's sort of self-contained and solo is the way of things. I enjoy doing that; I like the challenge of putting on the biggest show I possibly can on my own. That said, tonight I've got a friend of mine from England visiting. He plays the Electric Suitcase, which is an instrument that we invented together and will have its Philadelphia debut tonight. And there's also a guy with us who actually works at my record label who plays a bit of guitar and we might be able to get him to come up as well. So we're kind of forming the band as we go, we like to keep it interesting. Are you a musician? If you were a bass player or piano player you'd be so in right now.

I can play "Swans on the Lake," a song I learned in first grade. That's about it.
We were going to open with that.

And I can do a Metallica song on the guitar, but that's about it.
We were going to close with that, so there we go.

During those live performances where you are by yourself—I've been in the crowd for them, and I've seen the crowd's reaction. What's it like for you to see how the crowd reacts? It's truly amazing how you play each instrument and start looping the sound. When you are on stage, can you see that and react to that or are you in a zone where you're not feeling that energy?
Mostly I'm in a blind panic trying to not screw it up. So I don't really have much time to pay that much close attention to how people are reacting to it. I hope that by the time the song finishes there will be some kind of reaction rather than stony silence. I try to focus on what I'm doing and put the song across to the room and not necessarily to people as people, I just try to put it out there and hope that people will respond in the way that is intended.

You've been touring for a while now to promote the new record. What's that been like touring around America?
It's cool. I like it lots. I love travel. This is a very big country you people live in. Where I come from, a tour of Britain, in two weeks you can go everywhere and you never have to travel more than a hundred miles to get from one place to the next place. It's a tiny country, there aren't that many places to go to and like I said, you can do it all in a couple of weeks. I've been here for two months now and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of the Northeast seaboard. So there's a long way yet to go and I can very well still see myself touring this album in four years time and still going, "When do we get to go to New Orleans?" or something. It's an ongoing thing. I really like it because I still feel like a tourist because American culture fascinates me very much. The little differences between Britain and America—just when you think you've got it all sussed out then there are these things that I hadn't spotted before, little differences. Or even just like linguistic things, or words that I will use that people won't understand because they just don't have that word in this country and vice versa. I'm still enjoying the culture shock a bit and obviously playing shows is a fantastically rewarding, occasionally crippling, soul-destroying experience. And I welcome both ends of the spectrum equally.

We know one of the previous times you were in town, you had the unfortunate experience of having your hotel room robbed. Please tell us your more recent experiences have been more favorable, or at least less traumatic?
Well, generally, I've only ever been to Philadelphia when I've been playing a show here and so true to form in the rock and roll cliches, you get off the freeway, you come into town, you do the show, and you leave. So I've not seen all that much of Philadelphia. The very idea of Philadelphia, I love. I'm a keen historian and as far as history goes there aren't that many places in America that can rival Philadelphia for richness of history and significance as a historical location. I'm a big fan of Ben Franklin, he's a smart guy. As far as my experience of Philadelphia, the first time I came here my friend and I went to the Liberty Bell, which I must confess—and I don't mean to be in any way sort of nationalistically blasphemous—but it was a little disappointing. I don't know what I expected, but it was just a bell. But then I suppose maybe that's because I haven't grown up with the whole spirit of independence ingrained into my being. I later read up on the Liberty Bell and apparently it was only in the mid-1900s that they decided to call it the Liberty Bell. Before that it was just some bell that no one really cared about. It's been posthumously endowed with all this significance as a great talisman of liberation, but apparently it was always just a broken bell and people since have decided that it's a big deal. But I like the idea of having these objects which are monuments serving a particular virtue and I think it's cool. I'm a big fan of American independence, which of course is a Philadelphia invention. And I say good on you all and congratulations for winning one over on the awful British and their nasty empire-building ways. And I'm so glad to see that you're doing such a wonderful job of running the world.

No comment on that one. You mentioned Tom Waits earlier, and Scarlett Johanssen is going to, well, possibly brutalize some of his songs on her upcoming record. Which brings me to my last question—we've heard about your knack for quirky cover song performances. Any chance at seeing one of those on this tour?
Probably not on this tour because I get half an hour on this tour to do my thing. It smacks of a certain lack of confidence if out of five songs you play one of somebody else's. I like playing cover versions, but generally you slip one into a long set. Mostly the silly songs that I do are for this annual charity benefit thing that I do in England. I'll play for two and a half hours and it will be cover versions of silly things.

We're personally fond of your "My Heart Will Go On."
These things are never supposed to leave the room that they happen in, and that's kind of the idea. It's supposed to be self-inflicted embarrassment. Those shows that I do are a very particular thing, they're very informal and it's to raise money for good causes so I don't mind making myself look, frankly, ridiculous. It's the phenomenon of YouTube which has served to compound in people's heads the idea that that's something I do on a regular basis. So people will come to a regular show of mine and want me to play Celine Dion or Meatloaf and it's just not going to happen.

Well, we like your music just the same or more than most others.
Thank you very much.

Any final words for our readers?
I still haven't had a Philly cheesesteak, I'm a little scared of the concept of it, but I will investigate further.

We'll be pleased to hear when you do. Thank you very much.
Pleasure.

David will be back in Philly at the TLA on May 23, 2008 (w/ Augustana) so be sure to check that show out!