I was kind of always the underdog.

My hair turned gray when I was 24.

Growing up, the Opry was my Hollywood.

It's humbling when people sing back to you!

Country music is - can be - a loving industry.

You don't change country music; it changes you.

You should read a crowd like you read a magazine.

Eric Church knocks down doors everywhere he goes.

I get recognized more for my tattoos than my face.

You know me: jeans, T-shirts, boots, all the time.

Being called a new artist doesn't bother me at all.

Every 'no' I ever received was an inch closer to a 'yes.'

I was four days old when I went to my first bluegrass festival.

It's all been guerrilla warfare trying to get my name out there.

That's what you do with the worst day ever: you flip it on its back.

I grew up playing bluegrass as a youngster, and I'm happy that I did.

In college, I was able to be the vocalist for the jazz band at Arkansas State.

Your fame and your success moves much more rapidly than your ability to fund it.

There's a few people that I write with that we don't stop until one of us cries.

You have the most fun, and love is best, when it's just wrong enough to feel good.

I'm 5 foot, 3 inches. Even if I hit you, I'm probably not going to knock you down.

When I was growing up, radio DJs were celebrities, not just the people singing the songs.

I do know where I'm from, and I'm proud to be an Arkansan and to represent country music.

I am the youngest of six. There's the smart one and the pretty one, and I am the loud one.

I was lucky that my parents listened to really good music. My dad loved Kris Kristofferson.

Nothing lights a fire under you like somebody saying, 'You're not going to be able to do it.'

Sometimes choosing to leave a mistake on a track is way cooler than going back and nailing it.

In my musically formative years, I grew up listening to Suzy Bogguss, Trisha Yearwood, Terri Clark.

It turns out, the bikers and the truckers and people in dive bars are the nicest people in the world.

I love to think on my feet, and I love to be able to feel from a close proximity how things are going.

The thing about bikers and truckers is they're just regular folks, and that's definitely my demographic.

I've heard that the true love of country music is alive and well. That gives me so much hope and so much happiness.

I've been in T- shirts and jeans since I was a kid. I don't have to show you a bunch of my skin for you to listen to my songs.

I have a big love for jazz music. The only thing I hated about singing with a jazz band was having to wear a gown to everything.

I listened to a lot of No Doubt stuff when I was in high school - or maybe it was middle school... I don't want to age myself too much!

In bluegrass, there's a lot of joke-telling and a lot of banter between bandmates. It's like improv or watching the 'Carol Burnett Show.'

I was lucky to grow up in the '90s, when we had just as many strong female artists as male artists. That's a world I would like to live in again.

If you've ever been in a bar with a bunch of old sailors and see a guy that has an eagle tattooed across his chest, that guy has seen some stuff.

The day Guy Clark passed away was the day we wrote 'Girl Goin' Nowhere.' It was the first day I had met Jeremy Bussey, who I wrote the song with.

If you can sing to a room of 60 people who don't give a damn, then if, someday, you're playing to people who really want to hear your music, that's not hard.

Everything I ever needed came out of a radio and a dashboard. My Mount Rushmore of what was cool came out of a radio - Trisha Yearwood, Patty Loveless, Mark Chesnutt.

I was a terrible student, but I never missed a music class. In fact, I don't even think I attended most of my gen-ed classes, but I never missed a single music class.

I'm little. I'm pale. I'm not strong. But bad things are scared of me. I think it's because my dad was a preacher growing up, and I was raised in the Church of Christ.

There's not a lot to do in a small town, but i grew up on a cattle farm... some people would say there's nothing to do on a cattle farm, but I'd say there's everything to do.

I haven't shut up, I think, since I was born. I tend to talk a lot, and I sing constantly, and I know that it can be kind of annoying, but I would say I sound a lot like my mom.

When you see a chick that's not the skinniest girl in the room, covered in tattoos, you go, 'That girl wants to stick it to the man.' But we don't give a damn about the man. At all. We just want to make music.

I started playing mandolin when I was three or four years old because I was too small to be playing guitar. As I got older and more responsible with holding instruments, I was allowed to play my mom's guitar that she had.

There's always going to be people that say you're a sellout - anyone who knew you back when or who wants to begrudge you for having success. That's OK. Their opinion of me, and the box they want to put me in, is just simply none of my business.

As I got a little older, I discovered Lori McKenna and Patty Griffin and found out how many other tools we have as songwriters, that there's storytelling and there's ear candy, and that there is a place where they meet, too, and both of those women are really good at doing that.

Singing 'Family Tradition' with Hank Jr. was a pee-your-pants moment. Hank comes over while I'm singing and puts his arm around me, and my knees nearly buckled. You can put off the fact that this is reality, but when he came over, there was just no denying. I just lost cabin pressure.

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