My dad went to medical school, and when he studied he listened to music so he has a ridiculous CD collection. That was always something we had growing up from him; there was always good music playing at the house.

You have to think, when I was growing up Internet was a thing but no one had it. We didn't have it at the house, so music was not accessible at your fingertips. Whatever you had in your CD player was what you had, and a CD was $15.99 and if you weren't 18 years old, it couldn't have any cuss words on it. Now it is so accessible.

8th grade I started writing my own songs. They weren't good songs or anything, but it was always the song writing aspect of things that was important to me, I always just wanted to create a song it seemed like.

Every year it's one more step closer, and then at the end you get to the top and you fall back down. It's crazy.

I wasn't one of those kids that was like I'm going to be a country music singer or I'm going to be the next Pat Green and stuff. Hell, I didn't even think it was possible. I wrote to write. It wasn't even a thought in my head that I could do it professionally.

Songs come when they wanna come and I'll work at it when I feel like working at it. There are some songwriters that write every day, and I'm definitely not one of those guys. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just kind of what I do.

I am a firm believer in playing the type of music that compliments the song the best. If it's a folk song make it sound like one. If it's a rock song make it sound like one, if it's a rap song take it off the record.