I didn't have any expectations with 'Traveller' - I don't think anybody did. That's how I prefer the process to be.
At the end of the day, I just have to do what I do and let it be what it's gonna be.
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.
If you go in RCA A, you'll realize that it's not just a Nashville thing. It's a studio that belongs to music.
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.
Everybody's got a story on their beards. I guess it's just a way of finding common ground with people you otherwise might not know.
The show isn't about screens, and we don't have any video content or lasers or things blowing up. I want people to come to our show to listen. I want the show to be the music.
I don't think country music needs saving from anything.
The curse of being a songwriter is that's you're always at work. I could look out the window right now and see something that would make me want to write.
I love music so much, and I love musicians - I love singers. It's fun. That's what music's supposed to be. Fun.
I always just try to write the best songs that I can at any given time, and sometimes those songs are for me, and sometimes they're for other people. And that's to be evaluated after the fact.
I like songs that make me feel tough. Like 'Back in Black.' You want to hear it again and get in a fight.
It is a really interesting to hear yourself on the radio. I've gotten to hear myself in different capacities. I've heard myself on Sirius XM on the bluegrass channels, and on WSM and other places.
In the kind of fast-food world that we live in, where everything's so fast paced and it's, 'Look over here! Look over there,' we don't really take the time to sit down and enjoy music - or anything else, for that matter.
I never was a liner note junkie. I didn't know who produced records or there was such a thing as a straight songwriter. I always assumed that everybody that was singing a song wrote it or made it up.
We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.
Great musicians are great musicians, whether they're playing a trombone or an electric guitar or a xylophone.
I am always interested in making myself as uncomfortable as I can. Sometimes I ask myself, 'Can I stand onstage and sing this song and sell it?' Sometimes I can't. In a room, you get to pretend a little bit and step outside of yourself.
I like all kinds of music. But I would rather people stop caring about lines.
The first time you listen to someone else's interpretation of what you've created, it's a little unnerving. They'll change lyrics or something almost every time. That's them being an artist, and you appreciate it more over time.
I was writing waltzes at a time when the most popular thing was Shania Twain and the very pop edge of country. I didn't really know how to do much of that.
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.
I don't feel like songs should be hoarded. I don't feel like one's tainted if somebody else does it. That's the mark of artistry - take a song that's maybe even a really popular song and do it your own way. I think that's cool.
If you think about what everyone else will think, you forget to just make music.
My dad was a very straight arrow, prayed-at-every-meal kind of guy.
I like the old days when, if I wrote a song and I recorded it, it didn't mean somebody else couldn't record it.
I'm always trying to do as many different things as I can, just so when one is not doing so hot, maybe the other is still there.
I can pass myself off as a 'Duck Dynasty' impersonator a lot.
If I'm feeling like rock, we'll do some of that, and if I'm feeling some other way, we might do some of that. So, that's typically how I record and write and play music and anything else.
I like more of the club mentality, where we're playing, and if we feel like we want to play a cover, we'll switch to that.
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.
I didn't know they would pay you money to sit in a room and write songs for other people. I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found that out, that that could be a job, I thought, 'That's the job for me. I gotta figure out how to do that.'
Country music is one of those places where we support each other and prop each other up.
Among my dad's generation, when you gave another man a pocketknife as a gift, it was a show of respect. I'll still give someone the knife out of my pocket.
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 can only be me. I have a hard time being a chameleon as a singer.
I was in a bluegrass band. I made two records with a band called the SteelDrivers. They were nominated for two Grammys. I then I was in a rock band called the Junction Brothers; we made kind of '70s hard rock music.
I'm only worried about what I'm doing or how I present music. I just try to do things I want to listen to, and I think that's what everybody else is try doing, too.
It's such a strange marriage, a song and someone that sings it. When that works, it really works, and when it doesn't, it doesn't.
I don't look at family and what I do for a living as separate things. They're all kind of one thing, and this is part of their life just like it's part of mine.
I was in a band called the SteelDrivers, and we just played hard in vans, hopping on airplanes, not knowing where you're at.
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.
I'm always just looking to get back to the joy of playing music, and keeping it simple, as much as I can.
I like to fish. I collect pocketknives. I inherited a nice collection from my father and grandfather.
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.
I walked into a demo session one time, and a guy said, 'I'm thinking kind of like a Trace Adkins thing.' And I looked him right in the eye and said, 'Man, you've got the wrong guy. I'm gonna have to fire myself. You've got to hire somebody else.'
Everybody likes to listen to a song because it's fun, and nobody wants to sit around and listen to 'I-really-have-to-analyze-these-lyrics' songs all the time.
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 moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.
