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If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. For every one bad one, there's a thousand good ones.
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I could have done a hundred songs, really. It was hard to narrow them down, because I tried to pick songs for the most part that actually did have some effect on me or influenced me in the past.
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Making music is still what keeps a fire going on in me.
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I've been a lot of places, and my wife, Denise, she likes a lot of the fancy restaurants. I'm more of a basic eater. I still go into Cracker Barrel. Those are the kind of people who like the kind of music I'm making.
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I think if you retire from touring then people think you are retired.
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Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.
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What I enjoy doing more than anything is, I have my little antique car collection, and when the weather is pretty I like to get out one of my old cars. I have a little route I run down in the country, down Nachez Trace Parkway. The loop down through there is just really relaxing, not much traffic.
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The older you are, I think you realize what you enjoy and what you don't need, what wears you out and what's important.
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I don't write all my stuff. Everybody always thinks that. But in just about every album I've ever had has been about 50-50 songs I've written or co-written and other people's songs.
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Hee Haw was probably my biggest exposure to live music at a young age, because there wasn't any live music around my town and no one in my family played instruments.
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It's a scary word, 'cancer.'
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I think I've always approached making albums pretty much the same way. I'm just looking for a mixture of songs and topics that aren't the same thing over and over.
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I like to write sad songs. They're much easier to write and you get a lot more emotion into them. But people don't want to hear them as much. And radio definitely doesn't; they want that positive, uptempo thing.
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You think a lot of people get to be big stars and get a little crazy, but most of the ones I've ever met have always been surprisingly normal, and I've enjoyed that.
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I always try to make the music that I like and think my fans will like.
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I grew up with nothing, so whenever I got to where I could have something I felt like I needed to have everything I couldn't have when I was young.
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The music business doesn't take up that much of my time. I probably should put a little more energy into it.
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I'm usually just enjoying life.
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I think every album you have, especially if it's done well, you feel like you're competing with yourself.
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Oklahoma's always been good to me.
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My mother kept asking me, 'When are you going to do a gospel album?' And I've always wanted to do a gospel album. Everybody was going on about it, so mom started hounding me more.
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You just write about things that happen.
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I've always said that if you have songs on the radio and get played, you've got to have a tour to support that.
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A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.