I may look fake but I'm real where it counts.

When the new country came out ten to 15 years ago, people my age were almost too old. But it never stopped me. I never stopped writing. I never stopped recording.

I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area.

I think country music is popular - has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it's simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

Anyone who knows or cares anything about real country music will agree that George Jones is the voice of it.

I'm very proud of all the bluegrass-oriented albums. It just reminded me and my fans that I should always record acoustic music and country records, along with anything else that I might want to do.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters.

There's a lot of rednecks in the country where I grew up.