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On the new album you do a beautiful version of The Rolling Stones' She Smiled Sweetly. You've covered them in the past. And even Go Your Own Way owes something to the Stones –

"Yeah, the drum pattern on that. I wanted Mick to do something like Street Fighting Man, and he put his own thing to it. But that's right, exactly."

So besides the obvious – that they're a great band – what is it that you like about the Stones so much?

"Well, I think they're a band that has held up rather well, particularly the period that I cover, which is when Brian Jones was at his peak, right before he started to go downhill. He was starting to bring in European sensibilities that kind of balanced out the Chuck Berry-isms of Keith. I always thought there were a lot of undiscovered gems on albums like Aftermath and Between The Buttons.

"Everything else on this album, all of the original songs, I wrote them out as snippets of ideas right before I went in to start the actual recording. She Smiled Sweetly was the only thing I had recorded previously; it had sitting around for a while, waiting to find a home. It seemed somehow appropriate to end the album with it. It turned out pretty nice."

Stevie Nicks has said that, given the chance, she would have joined Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Conversely, would you have joined the Stones had the situated presented itself?

[laughs] "That's an odd question! Hmmm, well, that's sort of an odd thing for Stevie to say, too. I guess she was just looking at bands she likes. The Stones…uh, sure! [laughs] What a great situation. They have a raw, primitive approach to music, and I relate to that – I'm kind of a refined primitive myself, having never been taught music.

"It seems like a thought that is so far-fetched. Probably the Tom Petty thing, too. I can't imagine Tom asking a woman to join his band; he's got such a guy thing going on. As for me joining The Rolling Stones…it's a nice thing to think about." [laughs]

You first demonstrated your fingerpicking technique on your initial albums with Fleetwood Mac. It's really developed over the years, into a rolling style – like a waterfall of notes. The title track, Seeds We Sow, is a fingerpicking extravaganza!

"Why, thank you. Sure, you can look at songs like Landslide and Never Going Back Again for that. On Never Going Back Again, I'm sort of enhancing the basic folk approach. Over time, I've developed it and tried to make the rhythms more sophisticated. Big Love was the song where I really started doing it on stage to such a degree. With that, a light bulb went off over my head and I started thinking, Hey, I've really got to look at this as being one of the mainstays of my style.

"It has become more rolling. I seem to keep gravitating back to some sort of 6/8 time signature. It's like a measure of four over a measure of six as far as my picking is concerned, but it's only revealed as 6/8 when my singing comes in. It's an area of playing that I've become very interested in and tried to expound upon, especially since I've done more and more solo albums. It seems to be working out."

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