Musician

I grew up with nothing, so whenever I got to where I could have something I felt like I needed to have everything I couldn't have when I was young.

I think I've always approached making albums pretty much the same way. I'm just looking for a mixture of songs and topics that aren't the same thing over and over.

If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. For every one bad one, there's a thousand good ones.

I've always stood up for country music.

Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.

I've had several working-man songs that I like.

For some reason I've been labeled that and it's fine, but there are a lot of other artists that sing real traditional stuff, so I don't know why they picked me. That's what I've always done.

I really was a fan of his and always have been - his writing especially, you know? I think people a lot of times overlook that part, because he kind of got into that party character so heavy.

'After 17' is a song I wrote when my first daughter went to college, so that's kind of where I'm at in that part of my life. If you listen to that song and knew anything about me, you'd say, 'Oh yeah, he wrote that about his daughter,' but I try not to write them that they are so specific that they wouldn't apply to anybody that has a child.

I've always wanted to make a bluegrass album.

I mean, my girls are very sweet; I'm very proud of all of of them.

A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.

Hee Haw was probably my biggest exposure to live music at a young age, because there wasn't any live music around my town and no one in my family played instruments.

As long as I'm still able to have a hit on the radio and sell a few albums and some tickets, I don't see that it would be worth retiring.

I've been a lot of places, and my wife, Denise, she likes a lot of the fancy restaurants. I'm more of a basic eater. I still go into Cracker Barrel. Those are the kind of people who like the kind of music I'm making.

I think if you retire from touring then people think you are retired.

You think a lot of people get to be big stars and get a little crazy, but most of the ones I've ever met have always been surprisingly normal, and I've enjoyed that.

I could have done a hundred songs, really. It was hard to narrow them down, because I tried to pick songs for the most part that actually did have some effect on me or influenced me in the past.

When I was in high school, I don't know that I really had big dreams.

Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it.