I'm not a political guy. I've been a Democrat my whole life, but that didn't mean I went in and just pulled the Democratic ticket.

If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, Is that a song? I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.

I don't give a bleep if gays get married. That's just a contract, and that's between them and God. That ain't up to me to play God on that.

I sobered up and I got to thinking, girl, you ain't much fun since I quit drinking.

I'd catch moonlight in a bottle, if we could drink a toast to happiness.

I write all year, and at the end of the year I put an album out. And if sucks, it sucks, and if it's good, it's good. I just let it lay where it lays. It doesn't stop from doing another one next year.

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.