The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs - I really wanted to make a record like that.

I draw from my family and my friends and I feel like that small-town person. The achievements, the materialistic possessions have really become to mean less. They mean nothing.

I have a healthy cynicism, but not anger.

In a nutshell, this United Nations non-profit organization [World Food Programme] feeds millions of starving children at schools in third world countries as an incentive for them to attend school, which in turn might better their futures. They do so much more but I was so struck by this story.

L.A. to me feels like music industry, and Nashville to me feels like music community.

People go through challenging moments of losing people and of having their life threatened from illness and real grief. But they get through it. And that's the testament to the human spirit and it's -we are fragile, but we also are divine.

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own.