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Artists in general never stay in the same place; we keep growing. It's still you: you still have that core that you always had, but you work with new people and hear new things.

You look at most artists, the arc of their career, there's a definite decline at the end. And that decline could set in at any time. In your 50s, or your 60s and 70s if you're lucky. Time goes by fast, and you've got to be busy all the time.

I feel like every artist has an opportunity to create something new and to challenge themselves to reach out to a new crowd.

A lot of new artists sign their deal and then go into a development stage for a year or two or sometimes never get out of it. For me, because I had been a working songwriter in town, I had a collection of songs that I was ready to make into an album. At the time, I didn't realize it was becoming an album, but it was.

Music changes every three months. There's always new artists coming out. There's always new sounds. There is always a new hit coming out. You gotta stay relevant as much as you can and feed your fans as much as you can.

I think for us up-and-coming artists, once you're out there, once you've put stuff up, once people know who you are, once you discover who you are, we're all in the same boat: it's down to whether people appreciate the music or not.

I've been starting in new places year after year after year. It's just like when I went to Greece or the Philippines. I love when people think I'm a new artist. It's a chance to start over.

In the music business, especially the country music business, every 10 years or so you're going to have this changing of the guard, this wave of new artists that comes in.

Any time you're nominated for anything, it's a true blessing and something you should be really excited about, but it's sort of time to not be considered new anymore because I don't really feel like I'm new. I'm just glad people still see me as fresh. I wish there was a 'fresh country artist category' rather than 'new.'

When I was in top 40 bands, I always had to learn new material and new styles.