I'm a private guy, and you don't want to be out there preaching to people. But faith leads you in the decisions you make. You don't always pick the right path, but it's there in your conscience.
I'm actually not an exhibitionist at all. When you get onstage and you get under the lights playing music, I feel more hidden and more alone than anywhere else. You hide behind your music and let your emotions come out through the music.
I'm coming up on 40 next year, and after making so many records and doing music for so long, I'm looking for a change and a different perspective. And every now and then, I think I have something I want to say.
I've been around the music business for a long time now, and I've had a lot of chances to do movies. But I didn't really want to do any until I found stuff that started to hit me in the right place.
It's innate in me to be a Democrat - a true Southern populist kind of Democrat. There's not a lot of those anymore. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. That's just the way I feel.
No, there will come a time where I'm not gonna do this anymore. I mean, there will come a time, definitely, where I'll turn into Elvis - I'm gonna be fat and fishin', I guarantee you.
The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country.
The last movie I did, I was very lucky: I got to work with probably the best actor of our era, Billy Bob Thornton. He's just incredible. I was like a sponge: I soaked up everything he had to say.
We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.
When I was a kid, my step dad started this business and would go out and get lost cows and stuff. He was part-time truck driver, farmer and cowboy. He taught me how to ride from an early age.
You don't try to get influenced by everything that's going on with all the other music around you. You don't listen to the radio - I mean, I don't. When I get ready to do an album, I don't listen to anybody else; I don't wanna be influenced.
You know not having my real dad around and having a step dad made me want to be a great dad. So now I have been one for 9 years. And now 3 daughters. So, that is what I am - a dad, first and foremost, before anything else. It's just something that comes natural now.
You know, we're very private, and I think that we really separate and try to keep our privacy to ourselves. There's things that people assume a lot of times, and we understand that people are interested, but we really try to keep our family life private as much as we can.
