I get more respect from rap artists than I do from my own industry. I don't always write the kind of music that country executives want. Rappers are like that too .. my words come from the street, and their words come from the street. That slicked-up pop stuff doesn't come from the street, it's all pre-fab.

I feel an obligation to those people who are willing to go lay their lives on the line. These are the same people that when we call on them, and we 100 percent agree as a country ... in our lifetime there's gonna be an event take place ... just like when 9/11 happened, everybody wanted to bring them to justice. When we called on the troops, they went in.

I was raised in bars. My grandmother had one, and when I was 12 years old I'd go stay with her and that's where I got to watch her band play -- she had a seven or eight-piece band, and I would sit in the kitchen and peek through the door. I was kind of a 12-year-old bottle washer.

It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground, send them all to their maker and he'll settle them down.

My fans have been very loyal to me, so I want 'em into the mix every song. I don't want 'em having breaks on stuff I'm trying to push on them.

My daddy served in the army where he lost his right eye, but he flew a flag out in our yard until the day that he died. He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me, to grow up and live happy in the land of the free.

There's some nights I can't remember with friends I can't forget.