I think a lot of it had to do with, you know, I was always a daddy`s girl. I was always wanting to please him, and I think he was pleased when he`d walk past my room and I was listening to those records.

I think you can have moderate success by copying something else, but if you really want to knock it out of the park, you have to do something different and take chances.

Well, probably having to be away from home. When I come back I kind of feel like there`s a routine going on that I`m not a part of, so that can be difficult.

I love my little Mac G4 computer and we just had Internet installed on the bus... we all have little Macs actually, there`s four of us on the bus, and we all just sit there and surf the Internet!

Nominations come and go. It is not going to happen to you every year, and I am very well aware of that.

There`s no great guitarist that doesn`t sit down and listen to Chet Atkins and Eddie Van Halen, and all these other great players.

But I`m also a music lover, and I`ll always try a lot of different things.

The satisfaction comes because you work hard and it pays off. It is not as glamorous as I thought it would be, but, you know, I appreciate it more than I ever knew I would, and I love it more than I ever knew I would.

You know, you want everything you do, obviously, to be a success critically and commercially. But what you find out as you go along is that everything won`t.

I don`t go out that much anymore, unfortunately. I used to enjoy it, but I`m just so busy. Like last night, everybody else went out, and I just went straight home and went to bed.

I`m the most low-maintenance person on the road.

I don`t sing country music because I`m not capable of singing other kinds of music; I sing it because I think it`s the most beautiful kind of music there is.

So it`s more the musician in me that makes me stretch out and try different things more than anything. But, like a lot of guitar players, I have one certain niche that`s my thing that I`m better at than the others.

We have never seen a career like George Strait`s in this business, and I venture to say we never will again. He has handled things amazingly well.

I`ve learned the lesson that when you`re in the middle of something that seems overwhelming, or you`re in a bad situation and it seems like it`s the end of the world or whatever, then you learn that it`s not.

And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.

I can see me continuing to make the best music I can, and let the chips fall where they may.

I don`t have any idea what I`ll do next. This year I`ll be figuring that out, and something will just come to me, just like it did with this record.

With this album, I tried not to think too much. If I heard a song that I loved, I promised myself I wouldn`t over-think it. If I loved it and if I wanted to cut it, I would.

And I hate to see artists who are real safe. I love to see artists swing for the fences sometimes.

A lot of times in this business, we are taking advantage of hot times in our career to do a lot of TV and a lot of radio and that sort of thing, and George is able to be so humble that he can get away with not doing those things.

So you do shorter versions of the hits, or you take out a long guitar solo or things like that to make time for the hits and new music as well. But I don`t think any of us ever get to do as much new music as we would like to.

The satisfaction that I get from doing what I do is not what I thought. I thought it would be that I`d feel like a star, I`d feel important. But I don`t.

It`s hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It`s hard to switch gears.

And for the past 10 years I`ve been in a real commercial setting where people are all about numbers, they`re all about that bottom line. So it`s nice to step out of that and hang out with a bunch of people who play music just because they love it, as you can imagine.

And I also have a camera, a Web cam, and I have one at home, so I can hook up and talk to the girls, and they can see me while we`re on the bus in the middle of nowhere.

I came to town thinking that everybody had the same idea of what country music was that I did.

I love my little back room of the bus.

I think it is very important in this business to be an individual.

I want to reach as many people as I can.

Having that amount of nominations makes me a little nervous, because you feel that the bar is really high, the expectations are really high, but it also feels great.

And it took me about 11 years to get a record deal, and I just had to work around and come to terms with the fact that what I was doing was going to be different, and I just had to wait until somebody was ready to jump on the bandwagon.

But I just love that music scene so much, and I enjoy really being around those artists and watching them even more than I do performing, because they are a whole group of people that do it because they love music.

I`m a businesswoman. I am a music lover. I like for people to like my music. When you listen to top 40 radio, you hear pop stuff. You hear rock stuff. You hear all these different influences.

When you really are country, and you don`t just wear it like a piece of clothing or something, you really can`t get away from it. It just is who you are.