I'm not afraid to go out on a limb, style-wise or with lyrics. I don't ever want to be afraid to cut those types of songs because radio might not play it.

And it took me about 11 years to get a record deal, and I just had to work around and come to terms with the fact that what I was doing was going to be different, and I just had to wait until somebody was ready to jump on the bandwagon.

You know, you want everything you do, obviously, to be a success critically and commercially. But what you find out as you go along is that everything won't.

The satisfaction that I get from doing what I do is not what I thought. I thought it would be that I'd feel like a star, I'd feel important. But I don't

So you do shorter versions of the hits, or you take out a long guitar solo or things like that to make time for the hits and new music as well. But I don't think any of us ever get to do as much new music as we would like to.

And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.

Nominations come and go. It is not going to happen to you every year, and I am very well aware of that