I really like Ed Sheeran.
I love being an enigma. Every time I'm tempted to respond to someone who tries to put me in a box, politically - you know, someone who gets on the Internet and says, you're pro-gun, or you're anti-gun - I stop and say to myself, 'This is great; this is what I wanted. I wanted to be the guy you can't figure out.'
I'm a country musician. I know how to play jazz, and I can play rock. But I've had to fight my entire career to get a little respect from people who don't understand where I come from.
You're a sitting duck in a mall if you're a celebrity. It's like that scene from 'Guarding Tess,' I think it is, where Shirley MacLaine goes to the mall just to feel good about her celebrity.
As a guitar player, it's harder for me to impress somebody than it is to write a song that they like.
I've always known from the time I was eight years old what I wanted to do. I would have been fairly content to be someone's lead guitar player.
Guitar playing isn't really for everybody.
In the past, I tried to be more of a typical session guitarist. I wasn't so concerned with impressing anybody.
I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.
I've heard my share of Van Halen. I never liked rock.
The hardest part about writing any song is, what do you write? And how do I rewrite things? You start to run out of ideas that feel fresh.
When you fall in love, you don't have a whole lot of time. But when it comes to a heartache, all of the sudden you have time on your hands, and it's an outlet for you to write.
Deep down, I'm just a West Virginia hillbilly.
My home town was really great to me. If you've ever watched 'The Andy Griffith Show,' it's like Mayberry.
It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music. They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music.
I consider myself a bit of a comedian. I write a lot of humorous songs.
I don't want to be hurtful to anyone.
If somebody says, 'Do you remember the first time you heard a Rolling Stones song?' if you say you do, you're crazy. You've just always heard them. You might remember the first time it impacted you, but the first time you heard one, you were in a cradle.
I don't think I'm influencing younger artists - they're not trying to be me. But I don't say that in bitterness. I say that with realism.
If you're somebody that gets a chance to go somewhere... that has to work somewhere or go to another city, then do your best to see it. Because I just think that's the best way to have an interesting life.