I'm thankful to have Jesus as my Savior. My relationship with God has always been one to where I'm talking to him all day, every day, about anything and everything. It's just a continuous ongoing conversation that I have with the Lord, and I feel like that's brought me closer to Him.
I grew up like a lot of country boys and girls do - amongst the pine trees, dirt roads, farms, mules and people who were real.
I don't feel like God called me to be a gospel singer. He didn't call me to be a Christian singer; he called me to be a country singer, and I just happen to be a Christian.
I have a nice boat that I got a couple of years ago that's a Skeeter brand that's 20-foot, center-console. I have it set up for saltwater and for fresh water, so it's been a nice boat.
One of my favorite places is Seattle. Growing up, I never thought I'd be able to go to Seattle. I grew up in eastern South Carolina, so that's as far as you can get from Seattle, unless I lived in Miami.
Each day I feel a little differently; some times I try to write something that's fictitious and then there's other times where I try to write something that's true.
My granddaddy on my momma's side, he was a romantic. He loved love songs. Every Valentine's Day, I remember him buying a red carnation for my grandmomma, my momma and my sister. That was something you could count on every year.
I may never know what type of effect I have on my sons, just like Granny never knew the effect she had on me. So I just try and make the best decisions that I can, be the best father that I can.
The coolest gift I've ever gotten from a fan was from the Franklin Mint. It was a knife, and it had a picture of General Wade Hampton, who my oldest son is named after. It's a collector's item and came with a case and a stand and everything.
There were only 75 people in my graduating class at the school I attended in Hannah, S.C. It was a small school and that translated into not a lot of opportunities when it came to music. We had academic and sports programs but we never had a consistent music program. We would have a band one year, and a chorus one year, but nothing ever lasted.
You have to make a lot of sacrifices, and the main thing you have to sacrifice is your privacy. It's funny because when I was growing up, my daddy was and still is an insurance agent in our home town. He couldn't go anywhere without somebody recognizing him or needing something from him.
Sometimes it feels like I've been in the business forever, but then other times, it feels like kind of a flash. Growing up, all I wanted to do was sing. All I wanted to do was get on a bus and ride around the country and sing for people and be a household name.
Raising three boys is a huge responsibility for me, especially in this day and time when I look around and there's a lack of good, strong, upstanding Christian men who are not afraid to be men and just own up to their responsibility.
I grew up going to a real small missionary baptist church. We would sing a lot of the old standards... the hymns and everything. Those songs are still my favorite and are pretty timeless.
In today's time, writing stuff that actually happened is touch-and-go, because you don't want to be too personal. If you are, then it probably won't relate to a mass audience. A lot of times you have to make it sound like it's about everybody else, but you really went through it.
I've been mocked a lot. I've been made fun of, you know, of the standards that I keep out, and that I hold out on the road and the way I conduct my business and myself and the way I behave in this business.
You hear about quality time a lot but I really think that quantity time with a person is really what strengthens a relationship. That's when you really get to know somebody. You get to know their strengths and their weaknesses and that brings you closer. That's what 'Time Is Love' is all about.
I feel like the live record thing is something that I've been getting used to as the years go by and with this being my second one, I'm continuing to learn what works and what doesn't work. A live record is an example of that authenticity and that realness that you find in imperfection and you can hear that in this record.
My manager came up with the idea of taking a Pro Tool rig out on the road to record every night and I thought it was a great idea. I felt like it would be good to record over a certain period of time and then take the best performances of that collection of recordings. It appealed to me that it wasn't going to be from just one location.
I love Tennessee, but they don't have the pine trees and the sandy soil and the black water that I grew up around.
