When not laboring at his his day job or raising a family – and sometimes even when so engaged – Ian Bell is likely to be summoning forth a new song or three. "When ideas come, they come," he says of himself, "and you don't question how or why, you just scramble to get it down on something quick." He may not question how or why, but I did. Joining Ian in his studio for conversation and music, I asked about his passion for rendering real-life stories in song and about his own story: growing up on the working-class fringes of London dreaming of America, then chasing his own version of the American dream in California.