I grew up listening to everything, and when I got signed to a record deal out of Nashville, that was my introduction to what was happening in country music.

Emmy Lou Harris introduced me to the work of the Vietnam Veterans of America foundation and the Campaign for a Land Mine Free World.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want to try it again and again, and a lot of times my fellow musicians have to hold me back and say, "Nah, I think we got it."

I take my chances. I can't cling to remorse or regret.

I was really young, but I can't say that I wrote much of anything. I liked to scribble; I thought of it as that. But I was playing guitar and ukulele when I was in second grade.

In the late 80s, artists could be signed to labels and be nurtured. It wasn't, "We're going to give you one shot, and if you don't measure up, you're gone".

When I started out, it was this sense of, "Let's put out a record and see what happens and see where you go and see how you feel and where we can take it." That was a very different world back then.