Roger Miller opened a lot of people's eyes to the possibilities of country music, and it's making more impact now because it's earthy material: stories and things that happen to everyday people. I call it 'people music.'

Music is music. It doesn't matter if I am trying to aim at country or trying to aim at pop.

I know it was raw in some places, and I was a jerk in some places, but that's the way I was, and I was stupid.

You don't play around with a good song. You try to just say it right in the proper place, and if you get the music and voice in tune, you'll be all right. That's always worked for me.

I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago - by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

When you go to the movies with your whole family, it's a different experience. For some reason, it's something that you're all doing together and you take away something special in that.

My father's father died when he was a teenager, and dad went to work to support his mother and two siblings as a carpenter and as a builder's mule, hauling carts of lumber to construction sites when it was too icy for the mules to climb the hills.