I would hate to be a new artist or writer in town today. But somehow the cream continues to rise. If there’s one who’s great, he just jumps out of the pack like you can’t believe.

Success breeds volume, and it’s just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town.

That’s one wonderful thing about country music – it shifts, ebbs, and flows stylistically, unlike pop music.

There’s nothing like a good cheating song to make me want to run home to be with my wife.

This is life we’ve been given, made to be lived out, so… live out loud.

Country music is just country. It’s going to shift around a little bit, doing some different instrumentations, different production styles. But it will always come back to what you heard at the Opry. Nobody wants it to change.

I would hate to be a new artist or writer in town today. But somehow the cream continues to rise. If there’s one who’s great, he just jumps out of the pack like you can’t believe.

I’ve been here 21 years, and I literally did walk up and down Music Row trying to break into the business. I felt very free to go into any publishing company.