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.

It's funny to see my friends going through that middle-age thing about losing their hair. I went through it in college. They all say, "Oh my God, I'm getting old. I'm never getting laid again." Shut up. Yes, you are.

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

I like to rock and roll, but I'm a mushy guy, too. I want to be the guy that all the girls love and all the guys want to hang out with.

I'm a loving drunk. I get sentimental. "I love you guys." I drunk-dial a lot.

Before, I was more concerned with getting on the radio, like many young artists.

I'm very liberal in some ways, and then I'm very conservative in others. I once asked my grandpa, "Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" He said, "I'm a Democrat, but I'm saving up to be a Republican."