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I'm an American songbook guy, though I've got eclectic tastes. I really love the American songbook. I've taken up the ukulele, and so you can play 'Five Foot Two' and Hawaiian music, but you can also do some of the great tunes, like 'You Go to My Head,' 'I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,' 'Taking a Chance on Love.'

We want to pull out songs from the American song book, and we want to make them palatable for a modern audience.

'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings.

I happen to love the patriotic songs of America.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters.

I keep this crazy notebook of song ideas.

I've always been a big fan of the American soul sound.

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.

Country music belongs to America.

I've always been a big fan of books.