I remember making up songs in my head.

When I'm a ship tossed around on the waves, Up on a highwire that's ready to break. When I've had just about all I can take, baby you save me

What you see is kinda what you get with me. I'm a very real person, or I hope to be, anyway. I don't have nothing to hide

[Music] is the one thing that connects the dots in all kinds of ways. No matter how you were brought up, no matter what your religious background or political beliefs, people still love to sing along with somebody.

Early on I was just a kid in a cowboy hat with a bunch of other guys in a room that were putting out some records. Now thank God, in the past 3 or 4 years, when.. it's really hard to burn an image of a face with a song these days. I think that the songs like 'Don't Happen Twice' and 'Young' were songs that helped me do that and I think that 'I Go Back'(did) that even more.

I realized that I wanted to get better in every way. As a person, as a friend, as a songwriter, as a musician, as an artist, record producer, you name it.

We leaned on family, church, school, friends and sports. That's basically all we had. All those things really shaped my life and shaped me musically. It's why I write the way I do.