I never excluded any genre on my first record.

Nashville has a formula, and it works a lot of the time, but it wasn't right for me. They're afraid to step outside the box - even though, with me, my success came because I was outside of the box to begin with.

I love Nashville, and I love the South, but on a professional level, I had started feeling smothered by the Nashville way of doing things.

I think the themes in my songs are very similar from the first album to the newest one. It's all about the human condition and how we are all trying to learn to live with each other and survive love and life.

James Michael and I played everything on the album, then brought in the guys in my band to add their spirit to it with solos and specific parts.

Any album that I ever put out I'm going to send it to country radio first.

I'm a big fan of '70s records where artists could draw on whatever influences they wanted.