It's always a blast playing the new stuff. But I feel like songs, in a way, are never finished. You get to a point where you're comfortable enough to put a stamp on it and send it out there, but even after recording it, when you're playing it live, you hear different harmonies, you hear different notes, you hear different tempos or peaks and valleys in the song.

You're always kind of shifting and changing and it's a really exciting process.

Creating records and writing music with people I admire and respect is a very spiritual and enlightening thing for me.

I find artists like Tim Barry, Cory Branan, and Jenny Owen Youngs, these current artists that are doing what they're doing now are my idols, my generation's incredible songwriters. I've listened to so much music on the whole ride and I'm inspired by a lot of classic artists, but it's the people right next to me singing songs that are blowing my mind, if that makes any sense.

I love what I'm doing here but I hate being away from home. I hate it. I look forward to one day raising a family myself, and I really look forward to children but when that day comes, I don't want to be an absent dad. I'm already an absent husband.

I can write a song and a thousand people could hear it and there will be countless different reasons why those people get something out of that song. But they're all there for the same reason, which is to enjoy music and to let it help dissolve those problems or those rough days or to give a reason to keep putting the boots on. So to see ideas come to fruition and for someone to get something out of it is a beautiful thing.

Man, you learn so much just like with anything else. If you do something long enough, you learn. You make mistakes. You run into roadblocks and barriers. You overcome obstacles. You fall down. I mean you have to fall down to learn to stand up.