Ted Dwane

We wouldn't last a year on the road playing music that we didn't love.

We were proud of our first two records, but the parameters were pretty narrow. We didn't have full drums, for example. There were just so many limitations to that setup, and we really fully explored them.

Most people overcome something terrible at some point in their lives.

Our spiritual home is definitely the U.K., but we have such a breadth of influence, and America's a huge part of that, as I think it is for most bands.

We started off as Marcus Mumford, which is our singer's name. But then it very quickly became apparent it wasn't really a one-man thing: it was indeed a band. We wanted to give the impression of a family business, and we just liked the ring of Mumford & Sons.

We don't sing about eating local produce or growing beards or anything like that. It's funny to find yourself in a position where people associate you with things that are completely arbitrary to your songs.

Touring is something I do really well.

Ninety percent of the time, I'm sitting in a bus driving through some place like the Colorado mountains and thinking, 'Wow, we're not in a pub in London anymore.'

You leave school, work terrible jobs to pay rent, and that's when you start finding your way in music and forming bands.

We don't make music except for the joy of making music, really - and meeting people and sharing ideas.

You look at the instrumentation, and you can't really argue that we set out with commercial aspirations. Banjos and things like that are not part of some formula for global success. But it felt right, and I think there's some value to purity of intention.

As soon as we started playing sports arenas, we thought how great it would be if we could instead play to 25,000 people in our own way - a way we can control it so there's not all kinds of company branding around the show - and do it in a way that celebrates the community.