Country Roots Quotes

I'm a true country Southern girl that has always been built around family, cookouts and gatherings and being together on the holidays, singing together and laughing together. So whenever God opened doors for me to be able to travel the world and sing and do all the great things that I've done, I didn't want to lose that part so family first for me.

My country stuff, it might sound like Hank Williams - that's just the way it is. But I'd rather sound like Hank Williams than Trace Atkins.

I was raised in South Alabama in the woods, y'know? I'm country.

I always said that to get India stronger, first strengthen its roots, and all our roots are our country's interiors, rural areas, and villages.

I also grew up on a farm in east Tennessee, so my roots are just naturally super southern, so I've always had that southern country lifestyle.

Everybody knows in the business how I feel about country music. I'm an old traditionalist. Then they just call me an old man and stuck in my old ways, but with all the fans I've got out there, I can't be all that wrong. I do love traditional country music. I love the good stuff.

We all got a hillbilly bone down deep inside.

Our country is an agriculture-based country. And slowly, we are forgetting our roots.

I am a country boy and proud of it.

I believe that I'm a hillbilly in my values and in my attitudes, and I don't want to lose that. I think it's possible to maintain a big chunk of that identity so long as you're self-reflective and meaningful about it.

I've been a lot of places, and my wife, Denise, she likes a lot of the fancy restaurants. I'm more of a basic eater. I still go into Cracker Barrel. Those are the kind of people who like the kind of music I'm making.

I go stay a week in these little towns that don't have an art outlet and... go to the schools and play some of the old Texas music, sort of 'go through the Texas country roots' is what they call it.

I don't really listen to pop-country, but I like really, really old country that's closer to folk. Like Johnny Cash, who is considered country.

I went through all these different phases in my life. And now, I'm finally in a place where I know who I am; I just needed that extra push. I feel really, really good in the position I'm in right now, and I don't feel like I completely neglected my pop-rock sound: I was able to bring it in with my country roots.

A real farmer. He spent his childhood in the wheat, and his marriage in the hay.

I was definitely very much a country boy.

I grew up playing guitar in the late Nineties, early 2000s, so a very acoustic-driven pop-rock era, and then in college, I started listening to Jason Isbell and Kacey Musgraves. Then I really fell in love when I discovered really old country, like June Carter Cash - one of my all-time favorites.

I got to Nashville on Labor Day weekend in 1972. And the Grand Ole Opry is still there, the Country Music Hall of Fame is still there. And the roots of country music are still there. It's where the authenticity and the empowering force lies.

Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.

I'm from Tennessee. My mom lives in Nashville. I'm born and bred country. That's all I listen to.

Some people say I'm not country, but they don't really know how I grew up.

I'm not really into alternative country - I'm into Patsy Cline, who lived down the street from where I lived, and old Dolly Parton records, Kitty Wells and that old stuff. I like country music. I also like Eric Church, who has a great new sound but also holds onto that old sound.

When I got to Nashville, people started asking me about how I got into country music. I'd tell them I came from a place where people wore cowboy hats for a real reason.

Over the years, I've come to realize that writing 'I Ain't Living Long Like This' was an exercise in combined musical influence, mostly that of Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan - artists no one has ever heard of.

I'm country to the bone.