The music has to drive you. That's just it. You follow it. You follow the songs.

I get around OK with a toolbox. As a kid, I picked up skills following my dad through the oil fields of Oklahoma and West Texas. My wife Janine is hard to impress, but she does think it's cool when I fix things around the house.

My own grandmother went to great lengths to make sure I knew simple things like how and when to open the door for a lady. And the best thing my mama taught me was to pray.

What a fine line there is between artistry and insanity. There's no formula for it, and I think a lot of people when they're around you - even those closest to you - when you're in that whirl of creativity and you're grabbing those things out of the air, there's no rational process.

Sometimes, I work a little more from emotion than I do from rational thought.

I don't walk around with a cowboy hat. I did get a tattoo that says 'cowboy' that's a bit of an over-compensation, probably.

When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time.