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I'm a big fan of country.

I'm a big country fan.

Country fans are the most loyal in the world.

I think the attraction to country music is the fans, the lure of the hardcore fan base.

The crowd is wonderful. There is always a superb atmosphere in the finish area. It's good for the World Cup. I missed it a lot when I had to rest and it's so nice to be back here.

Country music has always sort of been country music.

The stigma with country is it's not cool. That's wrong. Country is very cool. I look at award shows, I look at how country is represented. Country is represented with an asterisk. We have to perform collaborations. We have to perform a tribute. We can't perform by ourselves.

I love my country so much.

Most of my read on America is through looking through the front windshield of a bus and hanging out with country music fans backstage.

It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music. They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music.