Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer.
Forget about surviving 40 years in the music business. Just surviving 27 years of Nicole Richie has been a struggle-and-a-half, I want to tell you. I stand here as a survivor, I want you to know, for all the parents out there.
I just had to find all my friends that used to be in the business. As I say, the music business didn't die, it just moved to Nashville.
People, as critical as it looks, we're OK. We are in control, whether we feel it or not.
Your kids can say some cruel things to you at times. For example, Nicole, Miles and Sofie are standing there in the room and I'm dressed to kill in my own mind. They'll say to me, 'Dad, you're not going out there looking like that are you?' If that doesn't kill a star, I don't know what does!
Lionel Richie, love song, OK, thank you very much, good-bye. And all of a sudden I realized that, in my career, what has made my career has always been the surprises.
I grew up with the Grand Ole Opry, Dottie West, Conway Twitty, Buck Owens... not realizing it was influencing me as much as it was.
I don't think I'm going to be priest material.
My earliest memories of country music are the Grand Ole Opry.
I am a country boy and proud of it.
By growing up in Alabama, I had a melting pot of the whole pie: R&B, gospel, country.
Country is bringing in a little rock element... a little '80s element. Melody is king now. But its just in the music, its not so much in the songwriting, which is still very basic to the storytelling aspect of it.
It's quite interesting that in my growing up I had several influences. We had gospel music on campus. R&B music was, of course, the community, and radio was country music. So I can kind of see where all the influences came from.
Just when I think it couldn't get any bigger, 'Tuskegee' reaches a new level of success.
I'm a songwriter, and people will tell you the greatest stories about their lives, whether you want to hear it or not.
