I heard you were stung by a scorpion a few months ago. Are you okay now?

I got stung on the finger, which is not a good idea if you’re a musician, but I’m fine now. It took me almost two months to recover.

I read that you had to cancel some shows as well.

I did. I had a totally numb finger. If I’d been stung on the toe, it would have been no problem at all.

Is it difficult to have to cancel shows like that? Have you had to do it in the past?

I hardly ever cancel shows. It’s the first time I’ve ever cancelled a sequence of shows. Before that, I’ve probably cancelled four shows in forty years. I’ll do anything to get to a show.

Are you playing solo at the Lowell show, or will there be a back-up?

I’ll be solo – just me.

What’s it like doing that versus performing with a back-up band?

It’s easier. It’s a simpler process. I’m probably more flexible. I can change the set around, and I can take requests easier – all that kind of stuff. At an outdoor show, you have to be a bit more energetic to keep people’s attention, but I basically get up on stage and see how it goes.

At this point in your career, you’ve got such a huge catalog of songs. How do you determine what you’re going to play from day to day. Are you pretty flexible when you’re playing, or do you have a pre-determined set of songs?

I’ll have a set, but I’m happy to throw it out the window. I’ll have a master plan, but it rarely reaches the end of what I was hoping to do. What I aim to do is play stuff from different eras, because I know there are some fans that have been there since the 60s. So I like to play something for them, then 70s, 80s, 90, through to new stuff. And I try to challenge myself by playing something that’s fairly new – and a few covers.

At this point, you’ve recorded so much music, and you continue to do so, and there are so many retrospective albums and authorized bootlegs out there. Do you ever feel like you’re competing against yourself a little bit?

I think you have to compete against yourself at all times. You have to say, “this is okay, but I can do better. I can always improve.” It’s always a sobering thing to go back and listen to your own records, and think, “Oh my, what was I thinking?”

Do you do that a lot?

I wouldn’t say I do it a lot, but every two or three years, I’ll listen to older stuff really just to listen to things like production on records. Things like, “was that 80s drum sound too big?,” or “was that 60s stereo panning really a good idea?” But also, in doing that, you think, “that’s a weak song. I probably shouldn’t have recorded that.” There are some songs you record in the studio that you might never play live, and I think that’s true of most performers. Some things you do in the studio seem like a good idea, but they never make it to the live performance.

Do you ever find that your new music gets lost in the shuffle, because there’s so much out there for people to digest?

Sure – I suppose if it was up to me, I’d play the whole of the last album, but that’s twelve songs that the audience might not have digested. It’s a bit of a load, and the audience wants to hear some familiar stuff. If I’m in an audience, I’m the same. If I go see a performer, I want to hear a few things that I already know. It’s a balance. You try to strike a balance between what you want to play as a performer, and what you think the audience wants to hear.

It’s often said that when you’re in the middle of an era, you don’t realize the importance of it. It usually doesn’t happen until hindsight. As a musician, do you struggle with the same problem? Does it take you a lot of time to figure out which of your own songs that you really like?

I think so. It’s an ongoing process, and it goes backwards and forwards. You can like a song, and then not like it, and then like it again. Or you can see different things in it at different times. I’m always forgetting songs. Someone will shout out a request from the audience, and I’ll think, “Oh gosh. Did I write that one? Yes I did. That’s a good song. That’s one I haven’t played for ten years – I should dig it out again.” So I think you can get caught up in the process of what’s new, in the process of writing and creating the next project. The last two or three you’ve done get put on the back burner, and sometimes you have to go back and re-discover your own work, for better or worse.

You’re well respected for your decision to drop yourself from major label funding and enjoy your autonomy. What has that experience been like versus the 30 years prior? Was it like releasing the shackles?

Well, in a sense it was. Not having any masters – I don’t mean recording masters, but superiors…people who have a vested interest in what you’re doing and might have opinions. You don’t have any of those people anymore, which is quite nice, actually. So I’m probably tending to make more of the records that I want to make and recording the music that I want to record. So that’s very refreshing, and I think there’s going to be more of the same. I think record companies are going to go the way of the airlines – they’re slightly endangered species. It’s harder and harder for them to see how they can really service a whole range of music anymore. I think they’ll continue with the high volume stuff, but everything else seems better off on a small label or an Internet label these days. I can see the point where your fans are going to be your sponsors almost. You say to your fans, “if you can help sponsor the next album, I’ll send you this deluxe edition with bells and whistles on.” That doesn’t seem to be too insane to me. It’s an interesting way of doing things.

You’re well-known for your guitar talent as well. Do you still find that you’re pushing yourself musically to grow and get better…if that’s even possible?

It’s extremely possible. There are always things to learn about your instrument. There are always other places to go. If you stop pushing, you become dead as a musician. So you have to keep exploring, and keep looking for new things. I’m doing that all the time.

Are there any contemporary artists that you look to for inspiration?

No [laughs]. A lot of dead people, yes…absolutely.

Well, I know that you draw a lot from folk tradition with your music. Do you ever go back to those English and Irish folk songs for inspiration?

I really do. That’s the basis of what I do. I’m an extended folk musician, and I refer all the time to the tradition, because it is what I grew up with, and my song structures are very traditional. It’s a great place to start. If you have a strong root, and you’re grounded in that root, then you can start picking out these other influences. You can start saying, “okay I’ll take a bit of that, and a bit of this, from this part of the world,” and you bring those things into the mix. The root has to be strong, though, I think.

I’m such a big fan of the Grizzly Man soundtrack, and I know you’ve done some other soundtrack work recently. What are some of the rewards and challenges of working within that genre?

You are a slave to the picture - that’s the thing. Whatever the picture offers you to do, that’s what you have to do, and it’s the director’s choice what goes and what stays. So you leave your ego at the door, and you try to be as sensitive as you can in the situation. I’ve done soundtracks that I’ve really enjoyed, and other ones that I’ve absolutely hated. It’s not something I want to do full time, but it’s enjoyable. Some of the stuff I’ve done recently has been great. Speaking of Grizzly Man, I’m scoring a TV series for Animal Planet on some of Timothy Treadwell’s other footage that wasn’t used in the film.

Your latest album, Sweet Warrior, has been getting a lot of attention. Was there something that you were consciously trying to do – a statement you were trying to make, perhaps – with that album?

I was trying to make a bunch of statements, if you like. But they’re really artistic stances. I’m not trying to make big political statements. It is a political record. There are politics involved in the record, but it’s still in the guise of entertainment and artistry, and the targets are pretty obvious. There are a lot of songs in there, and I think it’s an album that shows conflict of various kinds. There’s military conflict, and domestic conflict.

Do you ever find yourself being compromised when it comes to making that type of album?

Uh, yes. [laughs] Those are questions you always ask yourself, but I think you have to trust your artistic sensibility, whatever that is, and go with it. I think Picasso said someone could criticize the morality of his art, but it’s not his place to censor himself. I follow my vision, and if the critics want to argue about it, that’s fine. But it’s not up to me to stop my artistic flow, and censor myself. And I’m with Pablo all the way on that one.

So many of your contemporaries from the 60s have either passed on, lost out to rock star vices, or vanished into obscurity. Not only have you been doing this consistently for all this time, you’ve even managed to maintain your integrity and the respect of your fans and peers. What is it that keeps you so productive and creative?

Probably hunger [laughs]. I think you have to be driven to be a musician. For some people, their flame burns out in a few years. Some people are very creative when they’re young, and then it goes away and is replaced by other things. But some people have a longer shelf life as a creative force. I think rock and roll has changed in the sense that it used to be teenage music, and it isn’t that anymore, because the teenagers got older and are now grandfathers. The music has the opportunity to be a lot more mature. In interviews with the Beatles from 1964, Paul was saying, “We’ll pack it up in a couple of years, and John and I will write for other people. Younger people.” That was all they could see, and for those of us who grew up in the 60s, that was all that we could see. It wasn’t a career choice. You think, “I’ll do it for a year, and then I’ll go back to college and get a proper job.” It’s strange to still be doing this years and years later. I suppose in that sense, I think of myself more as a folk musician. I think troubadour sounds like a cliché, but someone who travels around and singing to different communities, and being part of a folk process. It’s kind of astonishing to still be doing it. But you need to be driven if you’re going to keep doing it for a long time. You need to keep asking yourself questions and challenging yourself.

You mentioned that you’re working on the new Animal Planet show, but what else is coming on the horizon?

Well, the next record is supposed to be an electric record. And I’m working on that right now. And I’m working on an acoustic record as well. And I’m working on a longer piece, like a song cycle, and that’s a commission, so it’s for next year. That’s a fairly big thing with a string orchestra.

Will that be performed in only one location?

I think at the moment, it’s going to be performed in one location, and we’re going to record it, and then maybe take it on tour.

I take it that’s a new venture for you?

It’s a bigger thing. I’ve never done anything that size before. It’ll be interesting.