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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
