I think that no matter what you do, whether you rodeo, whether you work in an office, you work in the oilfield or you play music for a living, eventually if you do enough of it, the devil in the back of your head tries to turn it into work. You have to find new ways to make it new and make it exciting to keep that drive there.

When your songs are like your babies, even the one that you know aren't great, you still love.

I absolutely believe that what you sing and how you act when you're in this position, should be the definition of who you are and where your heart and character stands.

Without changing my style and who I am, they [Trent Willmon and Dan Couch and Dale Oliver ] know how to draw those things out of me. It was a really cool experience on this record, because I tried really hard on the writing to make sure that I wasn't just writing it just like I wanted to.

One of the things that I always admired about Michael Jordan was that he considered his teammates to be his coaches, claiming they would always teach him something that he didn't know - and we're talking about the best of the best.

When we got to Steamboat, we were on that big stage at five in the afternoon, and it was almost at capacity. I told my guys 'no matter what we've done to get to this point, no matter what lows, what highs, right now we are here and we've got a point to prove." It was probably one of my most memorable performances thus far.

It's something that Cory Morrow said to me a long time ago - "Don't ever forget why Nashville is Nashville. The Opry is there for a reason. Country music lives there. Don't be bitter. And don't ever treat Texas or Nashville like either one isn't important."