I can pass myself off as a 'Duck Dynasty' impersonator a lot.
I grew up in eastern Kentucky, and we would sing in the churches, and there's lots of good mountain church singers out there. Like a lot of folks who turn out to be secular music artists, that's a lot of the training you put in, whether you know it or not.
Great musicians are great musicians, whether they're playing a trombone or an electric guitar or a xylophone.
It's man's work. My dad was gone at 4:30 in the morning and home at 8 at night, and he worked underground, and the last mine he worked in was 26 inches high in a lot of places. He liked the engineering of it - he liked the moving the earth and being able to extract something and put it back for reclamation. He enjoyed the whole process.
I grew up less than a mile from folks that lived in shacks with dirt floors. I certainly know that there are needs in this country. Not too far from your house, if you look around, people need to be helped.
I went to college a little bit, and that didn't work out, and I didn't finish. So, I would play in bars until I ran out of money, and then I'd get a real job.
There are great songs out there, and if I love them, and I know them, I'm going to sing them just because that's what songs are for.
It's a unique thing, and it's probably the thing I love most about songs and music - their ability to connect in a human way.
I'm not a hustler. I don't pitch songs. I don't ask people to write with me. It's not what I do.
I'm not going to ask musicians to sit there and pretend to play. It feels insulting to the musicians to me.
I'm always just looking to get back to the joy of playing music, and keeping it simple, as much as I can.
Anybody who has ever played in bars has played 'Keep Your Hands to Yourself.' It's a monumental piece of rock & roll. It makes you feel exactly like rock & roll is supposed to make you feel.
I think the path is different for everybody. Go after the doors that are open to you. That has always been my motto getting into the music business. Do the things that seem to be good opportunities and work hard at it. Try to make good decisions and be nice. Hopefully all of that will pay off at some point.
When you're writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That's the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.
College didn't stick, so I worked odd jobs, but I've always written songs and played music. I actually met a guy who was a songwriter, which I didn't realize was a real job.
I'm a fan of polarization. If you make something that is palatable to everybody, it's like making vanilla ice cream, and I think we have enough of that.
I think, at some point, all of us - I'm gonna speak personally, not for everybody else - you're gonna feel like a one-trick pony, and you might even be a one-trick pony. But at some point, if it's a really good trick, everybody's still gonna appreciate it.
I like things that don't sound particularly processed or mechanical or made by machines. I like music that contains human elements, with all their flaws. There's air in it, and you can hear a room of a bunch of guys playing. Those are the magic parts.
Country music is one of those places where we support each other and prop each other up.
I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.