Eric Church

“I went to my dad when I was 17 and said, 'I want to be a country music star.' Which every dad loves to hear. And he said, 'I want you to go to college.' So we had a discussion. And I'm pretty stubborn. I'm a lot like him. And he said, 'If you go to college and graduate, I'll pay your first six months of rent in Nashville.' So he bribed me.”

“I'm not a trust-fund type.”

“Country music is the song that speaks to the American condition. It's middle America. Eight out of 10 people. Maybe it's not the No. 1 choice, but they listen to country.”

“I don't use the big video screens that a lot of other artists use because personally, I think it's kind of a crutch. I think sometimes it's like watching television as opposed to really getting involved with what is happening onstage and the people in your section.”

“Bob Seger was a huge inspiration.”

“The most important thing for me as an artist is having an identity.”

“I'd still stand in line all day to get into an AC/DC show, because that was the one show when I was younger that kind of changed my life. Because it was a little wrong. I think I was 14 or 15, first concert without the parents, you know, and they were all worried because we were going to an AC/DC show, and it was an amphitheater.”

“I think we make too many records. One record a year is crazy to me. But some people have to sell tickets. The label has to meet their quarterly number: 'We need a record a year.' All of a sudden, the tail's wagging the dog. It's not the music; it's everything else making the music. That's just backwards. It's wrong.”

“I've always made music that was representative of real life.”

“I am very thankful and blessed to have a healthy and happy baby boy and baby mama.”

“I want to be the guy out there on the edge.”

“Maybe it's oldest-child syndrome, but I have always been competitive, even as a kid with sports. It spills into my career.”

“Country has become too homogenized and too commercial. It has lost what makes it special. It's great that it's popular, but then it starts to become watered down.”

“I have a new hobby and it's pretty much logging.”

“I can't stand making records.”

“I've always believed that you put everything into making the best record you can make, regardless of how you release it and regardless of the press and the hype - that the music wins.”

“I signed a baby's head one time, which I thought was an odd situation. I had a guy show me a tattoo one time, and he wanted me to sign the tattoo. So I signed the tattoo, and he went across the street and had the signature tattooed.”

“My dad was in furniture for 35 years. He got run out of furniture when everything went to China, went overseas. Manufacturing in the country broke down. Everything left.”

“I would be on the 'anti-reality' show. I can't stand reality TV. I can tell you one that I absolutely would not be on, and that's 'Dancing With the Stars.' If you ever see me on that show, just please understand my family is starving to death, and things are really bad in the Church household.”

“Once your career becomes about something other than the music, then that's what it is. I'll never make that mistake.”