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There's one place that I've always known I wanted to be, and that is on country radio.

I grew up on a farm, and we didn't have cable and only limited radio stations, so I wasn't inundated with culture the way people in other parts of the country were. But I was really interested in it.

But in those days - in the mid-'50s, early '60s - there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time.

People don't listen to one radio station. On iTunes you can mix different worlds and bring country and pop and folk and live music together with a mass audience. I could have sung 'Easy' in a country way but I just sang it how I sing. I think it's a really nice blend.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I've met.

I was born in a radio world, and I got so much from it.

I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.

I've never really been a traditional country kind of guy. I wanted my music to sound more like the end of the '90s and to have the kind of great music, pop or whatever, that radio will embrace.

I got to where I couldn't listen to country radio. Country music is supposed to have steel and fiddle. When I hear country music, it should be country.

I'm still heard on 1,500 radio stations across North America every day, about 220 million people a day in 150 countries.