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I've been writing since I came to Nashville when I was 17. I've been blessed to have written with so many of the biggest names around. They took me under their wing and taught me the ways of writing. They saw something special in me, which feels great. Every song on my record is going to be original, and that's just a really cool feeling.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

For me, and this may not be everybody, but because I do love country music so much, there's such a feeling of home in Nashville, especially because it's such a small town. You bring up one song, everybody knows who wrote it, everybody knows their mother and what their cell number is, and all of the stories.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

I'm surrounded by such beautiful, creative people, and I just love sort of sharing their stories and their journeys.

The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.

Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.

Being on 'Nashville' and working with some incredible people like T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller - so many wonderful, incredible musicians that I've been blessed to play with and observe - that has continued to shape the process of arranging music, writing music.

Nashville is wicked. It's like a proper music community, but it's also quintessentially American. You bump into people there with cowboy hats that spit in jars and call you 'boy.' I just love that.