Internet radio stations like KCRW do take you everywhere, yet thats just one of a hundred small things you have to do to succeed. It used to be, if you just got on the cover of Rolling Stone and a spotlight on The Tonight Show, that was enough.

Even for the people in the business who are real music lovers it's really about putting things in the right boxes, and my style doesn't fit into a box.

Country music was the music I was brought up on. It's the music that's closest to my heart and the music that speaks to me the most, and it's always been a big influence on my own songwriting.

I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren't really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins.

For a long time I was trying to be poppier and younger. I didn't want to be on public radio or do any of that stuff for older people. Then I realized that that is exactly what I listen to.

My career could've been anything, I just wasn't that good at other things. I'd say it was fairly easy starting out as I did in LA, meeting some great friends and musicians and landing a record deal. That's where the hard work began though.

I used to listen to my dad a lot as a way of trying to be close to him, as well, because my parents were divorced and I didnt spend that much time with him. I used to put head phones on and listen to my dad talk and sing and kind of had a weird bonding in a way.