I didn't come to Nashville to put on a cowboy hat and pretend to be a country singer. My attraction to Nashville as Music City is the variety and flexibility: the fact that there's so many musicians at your disposal, so many amazing studios and talented people that you can draw from. ... I try to be myself, but at the same time I'm learning a lot, and I'm pulling from not only from the well of inspiration that I'm getting from Nashville, but I'm pulling from my roots.

Swimming upstream in the music business is a hard thing to do.

We collaborate together. We work with other people. We work by ourselves.

In our relationship, we don't have that situation. I don't require what he needs, and he doesn't require what I need. I know what I do; I have an amazing life that nobody knows about.

I didn't come to Nashville to put on a cowboy hat and pretend to be a country singer. My attraction to Nashville as Music City is the variety and flexibility: the fact that there's so many musicians at your disposal, so many amazing studios and talented people that you can draw from. ... I try to be myself, but at the same time I'm learning a lot, and I'm pulling from not only from the well of inspiration that I'm getting from Nashville, but I'm pulling from my roots.

You don't want to pitch a tent and live inside the Louvre. You want to check it out, appreciate it, and move somewhere else.

The thing is, we've changed our style but we've never changed the actual roots of what we've done.