The most important thing for me as an artist is having an identity.

Now me and my brother go to see him some times but he don't have much to say anymore. So we sit on his headstone with a fifth of Jack D. Here's to a long line of sinners like me.

When I first started, you could go to a college campus and it was not cool to wear a country artist's shirt on campus. It was taboo, and there was a stigma involved. In the time from then till now, I'm amazed at how much things have changed. It's young now, it's cool, it's hip

When I feel like every day when I get up I'm writing songs, that's the time to make a record.

When you play the bars, you pay your dues. It does matter that you know those things [songs]. And the great thing for me, too, is that I draw on that stuff as influences. It's also stuff that you put in the tank that you pull from to make records.

The town I came from really had one industry, and that was furniture.

I don't use the big video screens that a lot of other artists use because personally, I think it's kind of a crutch. I think sometimes it's like watching television as opposed to really getting involved with what is happening onstage and the people in your section.