The best compliment that has ever been given to me was, I was at the airport one day and a guy came in and said, 'Lionel, my wife loves you, the kids love you, my mother-in-law loves you, the family loves you.

All artists are egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes.

Just when I think it couldn't get any bigger, 'Tuskegee' reaches a new level of success.

I just had to find all my friends that used to be in the business. As I say, the music business didn't die, it just moved to Nashville.

So much of my career has been about saying things the way people say them, using melodies not that I can sing but that the people can sing.

Simplicity is the key to what I do.

My earliest memories of country music are the Grand Ole Opry.