I try never to focus on the radio, just find great songs, find emotion and just write the best songs you can. I think when you get fixated on trying to do something too accurate, it becomes more washed out and less what you intended it to be. So I think each time the challenge for me is to try and reinvent a little bit.

I've had fans come and knock on my door. I'm usually polite, but I'm usually very direct and say, 'It's not cool that you come here uninvited.

I don't want to hear songs about how sunshiny things are. I don't like songs that feel like radio candy I like the ones that make you think, laugh or cry - they pull some kind of emotion out of you.

I really like the old stuff that I cut my musical teeth on, and I loved it when the industry was just like that, without really a genre. Today, country radio's more aimed at a demographic than a genre. It just softens everything.

If you date a musician, you're never, ever really gonna be first either. You're gonna be right behind the music and maybe right close.

When you take other people's opinions, you end up flailing and you have no center.

If you come on my property, I've got you from the second that you enter on. There's little lasers my TVs come on in my room and fall just right on you. So, there's no way to sneak up on me. And I've got a loud dog.