For me, the guitar was just a tool to make songs. I started when I was 10 - I learned what I had to learn to get my ideas across. I always felt I was a weak guitar player, but now I realize with the finger-picking stuff, I actually know how to do what I do with my songs, but I couldn't step in and be an overall guitar player. But my guitar playing has always been driven by the need to write songs.

I've always been pretty unfaithful - I've never stuck to one kind of genre or music.

There's no right or wrong - I think people can be messy in a very soulful way. The point in the end is to make people feel something, and there's so many different ways to do that.

I love melody, and that's what I love about pop music. The words can become what they are through a special melody. I learned to play guitar by myself, and writing songs came with playing guitar, so the writing isn't one part and the music something else.

I did my last year of high school as an exchange student. I lived south of the Atlanta, in a quite strange place - real southern. I formed my first band that year and we just started playing my songs live. It was way in for me to get to know people and to really feel at home there - through music.

When I went, I hadn't had very much time to have hopes or expectations. I knew very little about Nashville, and I think that was probably good. When I was there, I got really lucky - I ended up with people that just were amazing musicians, and that's the Nashville that I experienced. That is a big part of Nashville - there's a lot of musicians, and that makes it a very special place and shapes the city.

I grew up playing classical guitar, so everything I learned was rooted in technique, form, presentation.