The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.

But you know the thing that I thing oftentimes gets ignored and neglected is there was 10 or 12 years of life before I met Amy and before she met me, where you know, whatever happened was probably going to happen some day.

Success is always temporary. When all is said and one, the only thing you`ll have left is your character.

And just, once again, the connection there that was kind of rare was - it was - it felt - everything felt familiar, you know, when I met Amy.

Whether it is successful or not is not the exercise for me. It is not up to me. It is out of my hands now. I am not going to in two years have hindsight and say I made a big mistake.

It is easy to react if everything is going great.

So I didn`t have anything to do with picking the songs, but I got to musically take them in places I thought might be interesting, so it was a real neat collaboration among the three of us.

Well I think in all the thirty years I`ve been doing this now and being gone from home and all that stuff it`s really, it`s not about what I`ve achieved and if I`ve become a better player, or played better ten years ago than I do today.

I am responsible for me. I can kind of take care of what I need to do and should do what I like to do.

When all is said and done the only thing you`ll have left is your character.

The funny thing is, people`s perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they`re still going to read what they want to into it.

I do not like being famous. I like being normal.

It really does take a lot of time to make records, to be in the studio and do all that stuff.

Well, more than me saying to the rest of the country music industry there is not enough traditional country music - that is not necessarily the statement in truth. I think more so that I, me, missed it more than anything else.

This is just strictly me wanting to make a record that is the real deal. It is all the stuff that I have learned and know that I remember. It`s what I perceive as country music is about.

And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know.

I mean, look at her. Any idiot, you know, would quite taken with Amy.

I formally proposed. I`m a good Southern gentleman.

It is not that I don`t like contemporary country music because I do. I love it. I have recorded a lot and have had great success recording records that have not been very traditional country records.

The real amazing thing about all of this is I think I`ve maintained the mentality of a musician throughout it all, which I`m proudest of. And I`m still playing on people`s records and singing on people`s records.

Your talent level, as the years go by, you know, you`re going to lose a little bit of what you used to be able to do, like an athlete.

My last two records that I made were both quite pointed in one direction and I think I do my best stuff when it`s all over the map, when there`s a couple traditional things, a couple pretty rocking things.

I`ve always been more drawn to being normal than being famous.

I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don`t quite sing as good as you used to, you`re writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it`s just the journey.

I made records in the past that are as traditional as any other country records that have been made, but at the same time the records have a contemporary slant on it too.

I still have to play the solos and do the things that I do on my records, I still put in the work. I think that it`s more lonely, and it`s hard.

It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.

I had just lost my dad and I remembered all the songs we used to go and hear at concerts, and the records around the house and sometimes we`d play together.

It is harder to fail than it is to succeed because most people are going to watch you do is to react to what you`ve accomplished.

You learn a whole lot more about a person if they have bad breaks and all those kind of things.

With The Key, it was, I had gone through a divorce and losing my father, and just kinda really reminiscing about how much I loved the traditional side of country music, so I made a record that was really traditional from start to finish.

I am not struggling. What I do, it is what I do.

This record for the first time - feels like a record that really represents my whole entire life and instead of just a period of my life. And it is really kind of eye opening and it makes me feel really good to hear this record and hear all the years.

Yes, the companionship is amazing. You know, you can get that physical attraction that happens is great, but then there`s an awful lot of time and the rest of the day that you have to fill.

That`s the one thing that is really timeless is the songs. The artistry, the popularity of the artistry, that`s going to come and go.

My Dad says I`ve made a name for myself and now I can pull back and appreciate what I do instead of striving to get to my next gig.