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I was obsessed with country music when I was a kid, and it's definitely had a huge influence on the way I write songs. I was always attracted to songs that had a brilliant pun or a clever turn of phrase, but came from a dark, bitter place. As a writer, I've always gravitated towards that feeling.

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

Within the songwriting community, there are these unwritten rules for the way that a song should be written in country music, and I think that those rules are constantly being broken over the years, and the molds change and the process is evolving.

To me, country music tells a story about, and deals with, the way people live their lives and what they do.

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.

What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.

There are so many music genres competing against each other, but I feel like country music has always been a unified front.

In country music, one of the ways we may have gone wrong in the past is trying to be politically correct all the time.

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

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