I'm treating country music like it's a sport. I'm looking at where my competition is and realized I needed to work on my songwriting.
And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.
My wife grew up loving country music, so I always run songs by her whether I wrote it or if somebody pitched it to me.
One of the things that I think is such a constant in country music is that the song is so much a story. I believe it is supposed to be based around a story.
That internal ache is the starting point of country music. If it's a happy song and I can still feel sad in it? That's my favorite.
I was sort of in denial about doing country for awhile but I sort of grew up and realized who I was, what I wanted to say. I think country music is the best music in the world and I'm glad to be doing a country album. I hope people will love it as mu...
Country music is the poetry of the American spirit.
Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.
What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.
Country music is important to me, and I love it, but it's not my whole life... I like to be outdoors, I like to hunt, I like to fish, I like to play golf.
I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad.
I think it took me a while to convince Nashville that what I do is genuine and my heart's in the right place, and I love country music.
I grew up with all kinds ofmusic, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.
And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.
I didn't know much about him, and I wasn't a big country music fan. I listened to the Beatles and David Bowie, so I didn't know a lot about him.
I never get tired of exploring Americana or country music, and I always have a little bit of a crooner in me that never seems to go away.
When I first came to Nashville, people hardly gave country music any respect. We lived in old cars and dirty hotels, and we ate when we could.
I don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock.
I really like Alan Jackson, in Country Music. I think he's really very, very talented along with George Jones, and Merle Haggard, the same old favorites.
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...
My music has always been sort of in between categories. Sometimes record stores - back when there were record stores - they'd put my records in the country music section, but other record stores would put my records in the pop or even the rock sectio...
