I grew up on a farm where we had one radio station and it was all country.

I'm not good at chatting right away. Women have to be very patient with me, I suppose.

Yeah, I know a lot of soldiers. I know soldiers who don't like to hear thank you for your service. And I know soldiers that do like to be told thank you for your service. The ones who don't like to be told are the ones who've been through serious sh*t. They don't care about feedback. They did their job. They did what they have to do. Sometimes the people that thank them are exactly the ones they don't want to be thanked by.

Especially for me, growing up in such a small town in the middle of nowhere, the desire to be away was incredible. I wanted to see new lands, meet new people from the city, and meet people that were in much less fortunate situations than I was, so that I could be more appreciative of my present. At least I had food on the table.

I used to be sick of the backroads of Minnesota. I had to drive 30 miles to get home every day, take the schoolbus for two hours. But to drive through America and see the backroads, from Nashville to Memphis, Lovick to New Mexico, was incredible. It was probably the greatest trip of my life.

When you come across someone colorful and vibrant maybe in the present it isn't so interesting, but, in the past, it sheds a wonderful light onto living life.

I've always romanticized the late '40s and '50s - the cars, jazz, the open roads and lack of pollution. Now there are more vehicles, less hitchhikers, more billboards and power lines and stuff. People wrote wonderful long letters that took months to receive, and now everything is email.