Early in my songwriting career, when I was learning a lot about writing songs, I'd force myself to sit down until I came up with something.

My best artist friend is definitely Jason Aldean. He and I really get along great and are really great friends. It's fun to tour with a buddy and somebody that I just enjoy hanging out with. If we weren't touring together, we'd be hunting in the off-season still and knocking around doing stuff, certainly.

Even with all the negativeness of the whole social media thing, I still think it's leaps and bounds more positive.

To have your first No. 1 as an artist was everything I could have ever dreamed for. Now we're keeping our fingers crossed, and hopefully we'll have many more, but there's certainly nothing like the first one.

I think the attraction to country music is the fans, the lure of the hardcore fan base.

My thing is you just have to try to feel young and stay young. Obviously you get a little older, but I still want my music to be young. I don't want to sound like an old dad onstage, so you just have to write music that sounds young.

I am just what I am, I'm just what you see. So I'll make it easy, I'll stay me.