I think it took me a while to convince Nashville that what I do is genuine and my heart`s in the right place, and I love country music.

I have this need to keep country being perceived as a cool genre and a broad genre. I really think that country is a genre as big as rock and roll. I would love to get to the point where someone asks, `What kind of music do you play?` I say, `Country.` And they say, `Great. What kind?`

It`s something I`ve always loved doing. I`m not one of the artists who comes in and just does my bit. I`m there every second of every day. That`s my hands-on situation.

My father`s record collection was all country. That`s how I was exposed to it.

I`m a little more comfortable in that role. I love being in the studio.

It makes me feel a bit naked and vulnerable, but I think that`s part of being true to yourself and committing to your music. It`s therapeutic too going to the studio everyday is like lying on a therapist couch. I`m very comfortable around cattle. I can ride a horse alright. I can collect eggs and I can clean out a pigsty!"

It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you`re writing all the time. You`re collecting songs. I`ve had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.

Once we get into the groove, we`re kind of like long-distance runners - that adrenalin kicks in for me and I just keep running - and I don`t stop!

We go to Australia with LeAnn Rimes for a couple of weeks in October. We have a lot of shows between now and the end of the year.

You`re always in a different headspace when you make each record, so hopefully they`re all different. You just pick up things that you wish you hadn`t done on the first one.

They`re mostly done before we went into the studio, although I do like writing in the studio.

Once we get into the groove, we`re kind of like long-distance runners - that adrenalin kicks in for me and I just keep running - and I don`t stop"

My father`s record collection was all country. That`s how I was exposed to it.

t`s something I`ve always loved doing. I`m not one of the artists who comes in and just does my bit. I`m there every second of every day. That`s my hands-on situation.

It`s not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you`re looking for songs all year long and you`re writing all year long.

It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you`re writing all the time. You`re collecting songs. I`ve had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.

I`ve always been a pretty private, quiet kind of person and so I haven`t had to change my life really at all, I don`t think.

I`m a little more comfortable in that role. I love being in the studio.

I think the industry is oblivious to the fact that most people listen to all kinds of stuff. I personally don`t know of anyone who listens to only one genre of music. It`s vanity because no one does.

I think it took me a while to convince Nashville that what I do is genuine and my heart`s in the right place, and I love country music.

"Yeah, it sounds like such a bohemian thing to do, doesn`t it? But as badly as Alabama wanted that song ("Walkin` the Country"), I thought we needed the song. I didn`t have a deal at that point, but I thought that would be one of the key songs for us. It was a perfect marriage of lyric and melody and groove that summed up what we were about. I was renting a really old house, for $400 a month, over in Berry Hill. But the money`s no good if you haven`t got a career. I can`t buy a career, and I believed in that song as a way to get my thing out there. Even if it only ended up on CMT, which is what happened, that`s good enough. I do care about money, but I`ve never done anything for the money. . . . My first thought is credibility: doing what you do and not getting swayed by whatever everyone else tells you."

"I love playing, and I love getting lost in the moment. I like entertaining, and to me it`s a huge lot of tongue-in-cheek. The swagger is just rock-star stuff. You`re playing a star, and it`s totally fun. You know, it`s scary. Staying right on the corner of art and commerce is a tough place to be. It`s a visual medium, and you have to use everything you`ve got. I`d like to be able to do both: have the substance and the flair. That`s what I`d like, but the balance is tricky."

"Oh, I`m very fortunate to be doing what I`m doing. Again, I just had a crazy singular focus of what I wanted to do and that was live in Nashville, make records and tour. It wasn`t any more specific than that. It wasn`t how many records, how many songs, or how high in the charts. And awards, they never entered into it. I just had this vague overall plan. It just started coming together. Every day I look around and say, `God, this is amazing.`"

"I feel more comfortable now with or without a guitar. It used to be much more like Linus and his security blanket, definitely."

"I try to have people around me that are `born-to-be`s: I was born to be a bass player. I was born to be a front-of-house engineer. That`s my favorite kind of person to be around. Not someone who`s dabbling or semipassionate about it. This has got to be what you live and die for. This is it. Life`s too short, man."

"I`m really a one-day-at-a-time kind of person, especially now in my life. I read this quote recently: `Every day, you get better or you get worse. What did you do today?` It`s so blunt, but it resonated with me. I think about that before I go to bed each night. It`s great to be able to think, `Today, I got better.` It`s great having that sense of accomplishment at the end of the day."

"I think what`s lacking now is artist development. I think record companies don`t seem to take time to develop acts and let them sort of nurture their craft and find their audience and just develop. There`s so much emphasis on the immediate hit, and the immediate hit record and once you don`t have any more hits then you`re gone. Then you sort of haven`t been cultivated, so, I think that`s the biggest difference right now."

"I think, you know, the only frontier left for music is fusion, styles, and the constant evolution of country is fascinating to me because what`s accepted now wasn`t accepted a certain time ago and that`s a cyclical thing."

"When you`re touring, it`s wonderful because you`re always on the move. But anybody that`s single recognises that the hard part is when the work`s over - Sundays, Christmas holidays, New Year`s Eve - when everybody goes home. That`s when you go, `Oh, that`s right. This is my home, out here in the middle of nowhere`."

"It`s interesting because I`ve spent all my life playing live, and having people comment on my guitar playing, but I`ve always wanted to put more focus on the songs and the singing. So now, it`s kind of funny, because I`m in a position with `Your Everything` and `But For the Grace of God,` where people don`t know I even play the guitar! It`s just this wonderful thing ... because I`ve spent so much of my life struggling to make the other thing known, and then the reverse has happened with the nomination for the Grammy for the instrumental. But, with these songs charting, it`s just a beautiful balance."

"I think a lot of time artists who go out and make a second album too quickly haven`t got out and done anything, and everything they`ve been immersed in is kind of a surreal existence. And I think a lot of times that`s why the second records suffer ... so I`m trying not to get caught up in that."

"It`s not an indulgent type of performance when I play live, but there is a lot of passionate guitar playing involved, and it`s as equally predominant as the singing and performing - if not just a little bit more so. It`s definitely a focus of the show ... and we do have a tendency to play longer than we`re supposed to! Once we get into the groove, we`re kind of like long-distance runners - that adrenalin kicks in for me and I just keep running - and I don`t stop!"

"For me, my gift is music, and I would probably play a song for them and let them find something in there that they connect with, because everybody`s struggles are different. It`s easy for someone who`s not going through it to say, `Oh, well just hang in there,` but I think it`s okay to be hurt and crushed and cry and be angry and frustrated - that`s all part of it. I think people stopping you from doing that is not helpful at all. It`s important to rally around people that love you, because you tend to -- I certainly tend to isolate myself away from people so as to not worry them, but the people that love you worry anyway, so, you may as well rally yourself around them and let them be there for you `cause there`s a huge chance that they`ll need you sometime too."

"I have this need to keep country being perceived as a cool genre and a broad genre. I really think that country is a genre as big as rock and roll. I would love to get to the point where someone asks, `What kind of music do you play?` I say, `Country.` And they say, `Great. What kind?`"

"You definitely get to a point where you stop seeing your parents as your mom and dad and see them as people who tried to have a family and still tried to achieve what they wanted with their lives."

"A huge part of my confidence came from audience reaction. I`d had that throughout my life, but when I got to Nashville I realized that I didn`t know who I was offstage. I hadn`t spent a lot of time with that guy, and I didn`t like him very much. I found him geeky and a nerd. He was schizo and unorganized. The guy onstage was focused, with everything centered. The guy offstage was just a wreck."

"The hardest thing I`ve dealt with was figuring out what to do after The Ranch. I thought, `I`m lost out in the ether.`"

"Hearing Bruce Springsteen sing Born To Run, you know what his goal was. A man on a mission is a great thing to witness in any form. That`s fantastic and inspiring. I have had moments of worrying about this: I don`t have a mission that has a real focus. I didn`t have a plan when I got into this. My only plan was to tour successfully and be on radio. Now that it`s happening, I`ve thought, `I need a new plan.`"

"Well I have always seen myself as country but I spent so many years in Australia playing in these pubs where you had to be aggressive with your playing. You tend to start performing with a certain conviction and a certain energy. So that`s what I was performing with when I got to Nashville, which just freaked them out, you know."

"My goal was always to get to Nashville. And I sort of made the decision that I could stay in Australia and keep building my career. But the minute you go to Nashville, you start all over again anyway. So if I`m going to starve, and pay my dues in Nashville, let`s go. Let`s start it now and not in five or 10 years."

"I also think people like myself have the attention span of a gnat!"

"I`m very comfortable around cattle. I can ride a horse alright. I can collect eggs and I can clean out a pigsty!"

"It makes me feel a bit naked and vulnerable, but I think that`s part of being true to yourself and committing to your music. It`s therapeutic too going to the studio everyday is like lying on a therapist couch.

"It`s what we`re torn between, isn`t it? Bitching and moaning and complaining about this life, and, yet, not wanting to give it up for anybody, or anything."

"I knew I could contribute but people would offer me all sorts and behind my back they just found my quest laughable.t was awful, I`d be crying driving down to the studio some days, just crying, thinking `I hate this, I don`t want to sit in this room with some guy I`ve never met before and try and write a song. That`s really awkward."

"It was the frustration, not being able to get in my car and drive home to center myself. I was in this surreal world full of nobody I trusted and getting hit on the head constantly. You`re thinking `this is the best I can do and it`s not working, what more can I do?` It was a cheap escape - well it wasn`t cheap - but it was just a pathetic escape mechanism. I couldn`t leave so I left by being somewhere else in my head. It wasn`t the greatest career move, it distracted me from music. But when your entire life is centred on this one goal, are you really going let the drugs take it away from you?"

"I`m grateful when anybody can start to have his or her limited perception of the genre open up a little bit. There`s a lot of great music in the country genre that doesn`t get heard because people say, `Well, I don`t like country.`"