Like most musicians, I'm good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what we've done in the past.

Like many musicians, I don't look back much... only concentrate on what music I'm doing, and occasionally look ahead.

We all have different musical instincts, and I think they're precious and should be respected.

I'm in that comfortable niche where I'm not that famous and sometimes people do need to put a barrier between them and their followers. When you're real famous you need to do that but I'm not that famous so I don't need that kind of barrier.

Success comes to you with luck and a lot of hard work, but it doesn't give you the right to be any better than anybody else.

I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music 'made it' the same way. It's all different. There's no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.

Success has taken its own sweet time to reach me.

At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they're thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting.