Uncle Kracker

When you get to Tennessee, Nashville people are nice, and there are a lot of snakes, and they take that niceness and mistake it for being naive.

My immediate family, they would never have picked up a Kenny Chesney record had I not went in and did it with him.

My mom who was deadset against anything country. I remember being a kid and my dad would play Conway Twitty and she would say, 'Turn that off!'

I love the ocean.

Without sounding like I'm crying about it, I would like to eliminate the Internet from the music industry... just to see what would happen. Would it bounce back to what it used to be before the Internet? If you could flick the switch on off for a little while, it would be fun to see.

I always wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved animals growing up. I have two American bulldogs, but I wanted a turtle, I wanted a chimpanzee, I wanted this, I wanted that.

My favorite one is actually a car that Kenny Chesney gave me. As a tour present, he gave me a 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner with 30,000 original miles - it's awesome! It was my dad's first car. When I was younger, he was redoing that car. And Kenny knew that.

I love Nashville. I do. It's not home, like Detroit is obviously home for me, but stuff I like to do, I can't do around my home. This place is one big music anything. You can go into any bar and see live music any night of the week. That is awesome and not something I can get at home. It would be sweet to live down here and be able to do that.

I grew up in gas stations.

The only thing that kept me out of college was high school.

I like to do those hum-along songs.

Nothing beats setting a needle on a record and letting it do its thing. Reminds me of a better time.

I'm a little more laid back when it comes to writing. I don't like to do scheduled writing-type stuff. However, I've written quite a few things in Nashville and I love the guys I've written with. They're great talented people but I like to be on a little more relaxed schedule than that.

When you walk into a station and the deejay looks like Alan Jackson, you can tell they really love their music. They know what they're doing.

I want my kids to do whatever they want to do.

It wasn't until I got older that when they started putting only one form of music on the stations where I grew up. I would hear a R&B song, followed by a pop song, and then, maybe a jazz song. Maybe that was disc jockeys having a little more control, but it sure made radio feel so good.

Songs like 'I Believe In You' are why I tend to gravitate towards being so laid back.

Two of my best buddies are Blair Daily and JT Harding.

I just want to be healthy and feel good.

I don't want to be skinny, and I don't want to be buff, either.

I just quit eating like a dummy.

Me and organized in the same sentence - that's weird.

Everybody was like, ' 'Smile' crossed over big in country, now are gonna make a country record?' I felt like if I said, 'Yeah, I am' and I handed a record in, everybody was gonna go, 'That's not a country record.'

I hate the word 'Americana,' so I won't use it. I don't even know what Americana is, exactly.

It wasn't until high school, maybe my senior year, when I started listening to Hank Jr.

I can't tell you how many fights I've seen late night at Waffle Houses. I've not been in one myself.

I love good pop songs.

I like a good jingle, something vibe-y, something to sing along to.

I've been lucky because I can't be categorized, even after three records. If people told me to change, I'd quit and say, 'I've had fun, guys, thank you.'

It's weird how many people have problems, but it's life.

I pretty much did everything I wanted to do first with Kid Rock and, second, with myself. Everything I've wanted to do I've done twice, to be honest.

I hate bells and whistles. I like songs.

Gimmicks? I don't have one. I'm not good-looking. Not skinny. Not anything. I just like writing songs.

I always liked that pedal steel, even from my first record.

I don't ever really plan anything.

I did grow up listening to George Jones and Patsy Cline. I think those are the only two country artists my dad knew.

We always said, 'You know what, we're going to make a record where you won't have to tour it to break it.'

I can admire someone like my grandpa who was always happy and proud.

When I was a senior, I had government class and I slept so much my assignment was to write 'I will not fall asleep in government class' like 250 to 300 times. It was a screwy class!

I was accident prone as a kid, so I have scars everywhere.

I'm always confident with everything that I do.

As far as being comfortable with other people, I've never worked with anybody that I didn't feel comfortable with.

You would think that there's a huge difference between a Kenny Chesney or Toby Keith fan, as opposed to a Slayer fan. But the only difference is, Slayer will have a tremendous amount of energy coming from their fans, but so would Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney. It's all energy, it's a different kind of energy.

To me, fans are fans. If they're there, they're there. If they're excited, they're excited.

I'm a big fan of country, and I grew up listening to a lot of country. My old man was into country. A lot of people don't realize what a big country thing Detroit is, it's a huge fan of country.

I can't go back to Detroit and find the things to do that I can find in Nashville to do. You go down to a corner bar and watch a singer/songwriter every hour on the hour, every night of the week. And the town is full of other musicians and artists that are just creeping around and trying to find something to do and have fun.

I like to write at my cabin up north in Michigan, and I find there are a million other things to do to take my mind off what I'm thinking about if I get stuck for a minute.

With my first record, I didn't know I could sing.

I've always had this plan with Kid Rock. Just being best friends, we sat around for a long time going, 'OK, what we're going to do is take the Kid Rock thing and do this with it, and then we're going to spawn you off and it's gonna be Uncle Kracker this and that.'

There are literally hundreds of Kid Rock songs that probably won't ever see the light of day.