I do sing about drinking, but it's in a party way. I don't sing about drinking in a drowning-my-sorrows way, like in George Jones's "If Drinking Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)."

Music's supposed to come from the heart. I felt like that if it ever got mechanical, I was going to back away from it.

Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl.

Southern girls are God's gift to the entire male population. There is absolutely no woman finer than one raised below the mason-dixon line and once you go southern may the good Lord help you - you never go back

There were [in 21] all those times in my life that I didn't know this was going to happen. I didn't know if anybody was going to care about our music.

So yeah, it's nothing that I'm doing on purpose, I just think that the more records, the more songs that I write, the more records that I make, you're obviously going to fall into a specific style and thank God it's a style that people are into.

It sounds like a cliche, but it... you do sing about what you know about. And I grew up in a small town, and I grew up in a place where your whole world revolved around friends, family, school, and church, and sports.