I'm a really huge John Prine fan; I love his clever conversationalist songs.

Obviously I've always loved singing and performing, but I fell in love with songwriting and then I enjoyed doing that for other people and getting coached. But then I kind of stumbled into the right group of people that really started to create some unique music for me and what I wanted to say, so then it made me want to be an artist.

Different people have different ways of doing things. For me, becoming a songwriter first and falling in love with the Nashville songwriting community and the process of songs and getting better and putting more in what I wanted to say, was absolutely vital in me even wanting to be an artist.

The idea of massive amounts of fame-having my face on Walgreens end-caps and pizza boxes-I don't fantasize about that. I'm happy with just being a songwriter. I'd rather have smaller numbers [of fans] that are really into what I'm doing than a massive amount of people that don't really know what I'm about.

A lot of times, Im singing things that are observational and am definitely including myself.

Anyone singing about trucks, in any form, in any song, anywhere, literally just stop - nobody cares!

I'd rather be more of the hippie country chick - as in, instead of pointing a finger, just maybe saying, 'We're all screw-ups. We're all in this kind of together. We're all just figuring this out.'