You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter.

My wife is cool enough to let me write about personal things, to be a songwriter exploring the shadowy sides of love.

Whether lyrically or musically, it reaches in there and grabs your soul. That's the stuff I gravitate toward.

I always say the best applause you can get is when you walk from backstage up to your microphone at a concert. It's also nice to walk up to the mike at an awards show, and that applause is great, too, but the best is when your fans are cheering for you.

I still feel like that 17-year-old-kid that fell in love with country music, but I also am allowed to write songs about being a man, too, which I think is the coolest place I've ever been in my life.

I'm part of the party, getting the crowd fired up, singing songs, pouring drinks, whatever it takes to get them to have a good time. When I walk into the meet-and-greet, someone's always going to have a story, a sad story or a happy story.