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.

American Idol allowed us to find Carrie Underwood.

You never take your fans for granted. You always appreciate them every show, night in, night out.

My thing is, when you put a bunch of rules on a tour, you have to hire three more people to enforce all the rules. So, with me, I want everyone to feel comfortable. It's a lot of little moving parts out here, and little hiccups will come. At the end of the day, the show's going to go on, and I want everybody to truly enjoy it.

I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.

Our crew guys, it's amazing what they have to go through to make a show happen every night.

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.