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.

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

I didn't need more fame or money. I needed more heart.

I grew up in east Tennessee, and everybody knew everybody's business.

Certain nights, when everything's perfect and we have thousands of people partying their asses off, I break my rule and have a drink onstage. I've never done a show drunk. Well, I take that back. In the early days I did.

The thing that I love, especially after sound check, is when I'm in that stadium alone. It's complete silence. I love that.

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.