I think topical songwriting is a real gift, and it's hard not to be pedantic and show up with the sledgehammer message.

Every sleepy boy and girl in every bed around the world- Can hear the stars up in the sky whispering a lullaby

The bedrock thing of country music is, it's about storytelling. I feel like I was able to find a niche because I connected to that in some way.

I was a liberal arts junkie and I figured, well, I'll go work for somebody somewhere. All I knew was that I was going to have to come home and figure it out.

About age ten, we moved from the place where I was born, moved overseas.

I feel like they're different creatures, live and in the studio, but that's what makes it so interesting to me. If they didn't have any different shadings or colors, you might as well be a hologram or something.

As far as politically how country music goes, it's true that it's regarded from a distance as a genre of music that at different times, the more right elements of the political spectrum have claimed for their own.