There's a lot of people I'd love to work with at some point, but I think the song has to be the right thing. It has to be the right fit.

I haven't figured out why people like what they like. I don't know. I wish I did. I could sell that to everybody, man, and be a millionaire.

I had no idea 'Big Green Tractor' was going to be as big a hit as it was. You just can't predict those things.

I didn't want my records to sound like anybody else, and when I've got my guys in the studio, I have a language with those guys because we work together every day. A lot of times, you bring in outside guys, studio players, whatever, and they're great musicians. It's just that they don't necessarily play the way I want it to be played.

If you say, 'I'm going to cut this song because I know the teenagers are going to love it,' well, then you're going to alienate everybody else. When I cut my record, I'm just going to cut the things that I like, and whoever likes it, likes it. That's too much work to try to figure out the demographic. That's too much like a business.

Traveling all over the country and all over the world, I think you've got a lot of pop acts and a lot of rock acts that are making a point of traveling to different places and making people aware of their music and their shows and the whole deal and I think country music has always sort of stayed, for the most part, in the states.

Country music artists are staying true to their roots, keeping it country but throwing a little bit of rock flair in there which I think is a good thing.