Musician

I'd love to make short film videos pushing the conventional standards of what a country music video can be.

It's hard enough to sit at a table and talk to most people as it is. But we can go to some town, and there's 300 people we've never met before, and by the third song, we're connecting with everyone in that room.

Anything that I'm naturally curious about, I get really into. Maybe it's O.C.D. I get really consumed by something until I absorb it, then I'm done with it.

I wanted to make an album that takes a journey through all my favorite periods in music and then culminates in something that will most likely end my career.

I just really want to make - to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.

My wife thinks I'm crazy.

I've always played music. But you know, in eastern Kentucky, everybody plays music.

I want people to focus on listening, not the image. And I want to play to everyone: rednecks, dubstep kids, punk rockers, and people who like as-real-as-it-gets country music.

Kentucky isn't particularly religious.

I needed a writing space to get out of my house with the little guy. Because any time I try to write or sit down and do things, he wants to be there with me and play the guitar.

Looking back on it, now I can identify the points in my life when I wasn't playing, and music - and didn't have that outlet - those were the points when I was most unguided and self destructive because I didn't have that channel to get those energies out. I'm a much healthier person when I play music.

I love tape. It's another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.

I don't pretend to be an astrophysicist or anything, even though I do read about certain things like metaphysics and cosmology that I've always just been really interested in. I don't pretend to be able to sit down and pontificate on any of these subjects.

I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.

I'm interested in exploring various forms of newer media that might allow those who otherwise don't listen to country to find and connect with my music.

I'm grateful to all the non-risk-takers.

I worked for Union Pacific. I started out as a conductor at an intermodal switching facility outside of Salt Lake City. We'd pull in trains from all over the country, break them apart, consolidate the freight, and build other trains. It was great until I screwed up and took a management position. Then it became no fun very quickly.

The art is what can't be put on a timeline. You can't say, 'Well, I'm going to make a record in May because that's when the producer has a window.' So just recording and getting things out is paramount for me.

Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three - so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.

Music Row gets dragged through the dirt, but they're just trying to survive.