Just because I don't sing about the normal country themes doesn't mean my songs aren't country. I'd rather sing about having fun.

There were years of that stuff that will never leave me. Never. When the bus turned a million miles - that's a lot of traveling. It's really cool to think about. I'm blessed to have traveled a million miles on a tour bus.

I can say that I don't see myself with the foot on the gas pedal as hard as it's been down for 16 years.

Record labels today are much less patient: Artists have a bad record, and they're gone.

When I started playing music at East Tennessee State University I would sit on a stool with a tip jar in front of me and play four hours a night at a college bar called Quarterback's Barbecue. I wasn't thinking about doing it for a living. I was just making enough money to go to Taco Bell every day. People were eating chips, drinking beer and not listening to me. I'd had three or four years of people ignoring me, and I'd kind of gotten used to it.

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.

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.