First and foremost, I consider myself a songwriter.

In 1994 I bought my first tour bus. I still own it and believe it or not it's still out on the road on my tour.

I needed to be pushed as an artist and as a person.

There's this idea that somebody's job could be more important than somebody else's, and to me, that's not true.

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.

I was on one bus with my band and crew for seven years. I didn't come to town with a karaoke tape. I didn't get on a TV show. There were no shortcuts. Anybody who wants to follow my model is welcome to it. You don't want to follow my path.

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.