I started playing guitar and writing songs when I was 15. I think what mainly sparked my interest was just the fact that I grew up listening to Cheryl King, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor, and was just always inspired by that sort of organic art, and organic songs and just very natural songwriting that came out of some of those artists.

I've never feared the unexpected.

My biggest advice for girls - and this is something that I wish I could have known when I was younger - is to have thick skin. It's something that you definitely develop when you get older, but when I first started, I was so obsessed with pleasing everybody. I wanted everybody to like me and to like my songs.

I am very busy and don't have a lot of down time, but I write my best songs in those situations. I enjoy my life the most when I have a bunch of things going on at the same time.

My music is the chicken soup kind. I want people to get a good feeling in their soul from these songs. Roots rock, heartland rock...whatever you want to call it is OK with me.

I consider myself a songwriter before anything else. The fact that I have been able to write both of my records and establishing myself as a songwriter is super-important to me. Some people have that gift, where they can take on anything and make people believe it. I like to do a song from personal experience.

I know who I am as an artist and I know what my sound is, but I wanted to know what I could do in order to take it to that next level. So the experiences I had last year of moving to California and traveling to places like Rome and Nicaragua where I met a lot of people just had a really big impact in my life.