I don't like the current political system in the USA and some other countries. Increasingly democracy has been hijacked by corporate interests.
I see country music, I see people who take care of their own. You've got 75 year-old guys on the road. That's what I was put here to do, y'know, so I wanna make sure I surround myself with people who are gonna take care of me. 'Cause I'm in it for the long run.
It's a robust time, probably the most fertile time for the underground and for revolution since Nixon. I'm not talking about political overthrow; I'm talking about just general cultural revolution. Bush has polarised the country and is creating this breeding ground for an opposition. In the next couple of months, they'll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It's pretty crazy.
I have no idea who's steering, and I don't really care .. I just keep going whatever the inclination is ... there are threads that are continuous and hold everything together and a major thread is country music.
I think I'm going to be making country records for as long as I can see into the future. It's much more down-home and real.
This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.
That's a defining moment, there, when someone plays an instrument that everyone relates to around the planet.
My songs speak for themselves. The musicians who play on them and the way they sound and where they were recorded and the way they were recorded is the old Nashville way ... they sound as country or more country than a lot of things that are on country radio.
Of course you have to support the troops. They're just kids. They're doing for their country what's expected of them.
The youth of this country are not behind what is going on. We all know that. If you looked at a [political] map of the United States 25 and under, it's all-revealing. It's a unified map.
