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When you go to the Opry for a show or hear it on the radio, you get the whole circle of country music.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

I'm always kind of surprised how much I'm associated with country music.

Country music is always changing but the Opry is always there to serve as a lighthouse for what country music really is. The past, present and future is all encompassed by not only the physical structure of the building but also the radio show.

Country music belongs to America.

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.

The word matters in country music, and it always has. And everybody had lived those words in country songs.

There were a lot of heads turning when people found out I was doing music and when they found out it was country, they were like, 'What?'

There's been a shift: Country music is popular music now. Every other genre wants to come over to our land.