Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People are always surprised to find this out, but the songs that we write, such as 'Winner of a Losing Game' and things like that, tend to be more country than the other stuff that we cut from outside writers.
When you get new people around you, the excitement is new because they have different take on your music. They play it in a different way, and that's always exciting to be around. It elevates everybody onstage.
It's so much fun to have vocal groups out on the road because we get to see them do their thing, and at the end of the night, we come back, and we all do a big thing together for the encore with 'American Band.'
My mother and father are big musical heroes of mine. I think it was because it was the first memories that I have of actually hearing music and falling in love with it and wanting to be a part of it in some way.
That's what we all hope and dream to do, when we stand in front of the mirror with our Goody comb and sing into it, is to have a bunch of songs that have touched people so much that they want to hear 'em every night.
It would be nice sometimes to take a longer break in between projects, but unfortunately, the way that the business is, there's such a demand for new material on a consistent basis that it's nearly impossible to do that.
I grew up in the church and loved contemporary Christian music. I go back to the early days of when it first started with the likes of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. Those people that really pioneered are heroes of mine.
So many people in this world get up every day and go to their nine-to-five job they hate for 12 months a year for 30 years. I kind of do a self-check and evaluation to realize I'm very blessed and grateful to be where I am.
I love making records. That's my favorite part of the whole process. And I love playing live, but certainly getting the music on a disc that's going to live forever and be there forever, just every little detail drives me crazy.
We were so influenced not only by country music but by the rock bands of the '80s. Our focus was to bring in something different. Country music already had a George Strait and Alabama. We wanted to put some pop music in our show.
You learn really quickly how not only to be an artist, but you also become all of a sudden the CEO and owners of a company that you have to make major decisions about that I don't think we were fully prepared for in the beginning.
People would say, 'Why are you guys in country music? You look like you're in the Backstreet Boys.' We took so much heat. We always said, 'It's not about hats and Wrangler Jeans. It's about a state of mind. Country is in our souls.'
I've been really, really fortunate to have a mother that has spent many, many long hours on her knees praying for me. And I guarantee you, I would almost bet everything I have that that has saved me more often than not. So it sustains me.
My beliefs and my faith are part of who I am, and I'm so grateful that I had the foundation laid early on. My mom took me to church from my earliest memories, so I'm grateful to have had that foundation laid early, and it's just part of who I am.
It's always a wonderful time to be able to settle down by the fire, enjoy the Christmas tree and the decorations, and just spend time with the ones you love and surround yourself with the people that you don't get to see enough throughout the year.
I think the 360 deals are what stands out to me, first and foremost. I never would have dreamed that record labels would be taking a piece of touring, merchandise, and everything else. The world has changed so dramatically from when we first started.
When you put a new show out, you always have a few kinks that you need to iron out, and you need to dial your show in. You figure out over a couple of weeks what songs work well together and what songs may not have the impact you thought they would at that spot in the show.
Christian music was such a huge foundation for me, even as a kid, and I grew to love Christian music not only because of the musicianship, which I thought was extraordinary, but because of the message in it. It was such a huge building block of who I was and who I would become.
It's hard to get to the point where you feel motivated and energized to go back in and create new music when you feel like you've just drained yourself by pouring everything you have into the previous project. It would be nice sometimes to take a longer break in between projects.
You can't manufacture the feeling of being in a small crowd and connecting on every single level to the very last person in the very last row in the back. I think when you evolve into a headlining act and things get bigger, the intimacy and some of that energy gets lost a little bit.
I think the thing that keeps us motivated is challenging ourselves to see if we can be better than we've been before and seeing if we can stumble upon a magic that wasn't there before - whether it's a song, a performance, or a track that lights us up the way the first few records did.
I think that anybody can go home, put the record on, and listen to it note for note, but there's very little entertainment value in that, I believe. When you give people something visually entertaining to watch along with presenting the music, I feel it makes it a lot more interesting.
What an incredible honor for us to share the stage with real life rock n' roll icons, the Rolling Stones. There are a lot of bucket list moments that you dream up as a performing musician, and this is a pretty wild one to actually have come true. You, in fact, can get some satisfaction!
It's really easy to be grounded again when you get back home, and you sing in front of 20,000 people a night, and your wife hands you the kids and tells you it's your turn to be on diaper duty and take out the trash. So it's easy to keep things in perspective when things like that happen.
It was such a whirlwind for us for about three to four years there that, every time we turned around, we were pulled in 90 different directions, and I look back on that now, and they're such wonderful memories, but you kinda wish that you would've taken the time to savor them a little bit more.
The hardest part, for me, is being in the band and knowing the way I want certain things to sound, but also having to listen to opinions, and very valid opinions, of my bandmates. So, sometimes, I'll have to have conversations with them as a producer and then conversations with them as a bandmate.
I was at a Dolly Parton concert when I was about 9 years old. I saw her at the Ohio State Fair, and it was my first real concert that I'd been to. I saw that crowd and how they reacted and how great of a performer she was and the band. Just the energy of the whole thing collectively really captured me.
I want to be a part of bringing more visibility to the Christian music genre and give it some platforms that it may not have had before. I feel like, as blessed as we've been with Rascal Flatts, I might be able, through some of my own connections and avenues, to give them some visibility in arenas they've never had before.
I've been on the road since I was 15, in one way or another - on a bus, in a 15-passenger van, pulling a U-haul - so I would be lying if I said sometimes the miles and the road didn't get long. But it's always rewarding, that hour and a half every night you get to stand up there and see it all pay off and feel the love from that crowd.
A lot of people still don't realize that, before Rascal Flatts, I was in a Christian band for four or five years, and I had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest pop musicians and producers in L.A. I learned a lot from Peter Wolf; he was one of my heroes growing up in the '80s. He was a producer of a lot legendary pop music.
When you first start out in the music business and hope that you have a couple hits, the ultimate payoff is to be standing in front of all those people who are singing it back to you at the top of their lungs. And you know by the way they're singing it back that it's affected their life in some way. That's the ultimate reward as an artist for me.