Seven has always been my lucky number. It's on my guitar pick; in sports, that was always the number I was, and 'Riser' is my seventh album. With this album kind of coming to an end and having seven nominations at the ACMs, it feels like a bigger story in play for me, and it's the perfect number. I wouldn't have wanted eight!

Growing up in Arizona, I love fireworks, shooting off bottle rockets and M80s.

My dad and grandpa were in the army and as a country singer you're constantly playing at military bases all across the country and meeting soldiers and their families and hearing their stories.

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.

My mom, Clida, taught my four brothers and me about her father's work to organize black voters in rural Louisiana in the 1950s. We carried her dad's legacy of activism with us. The Civil Rights Movement was present in the daily life of my family in Detroit in the 1970s.

My daddy, Rev. A. D. King, my granddaddy, Martin Luther King, Senior - we are a family of faith, hope and love.

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.

Whenever I don't have anything to do, I play Candy Crush or Scrabble. We actors have time between shots, which we need to kill. And we cannot call friends or family, as you are called at a moment's notice. So you need to do something which you can dispose of immediately when called for a shot.