I embrace country music because of love, a love of what I came from.
I am probably the last of a generation able to gain an education in country music by osmosis, by sitting in a '64 Ford banging the buttons on the radio.
Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.
I'll never quit playing country music, or at least acknowledging it, always, as the cornerstone of what I am.
Ironically, the success I've experienced at country radio has left me ostracized from pop and other formats of radio.
