Jay DeMarcus

“My mom was a singer, and my dad had been playing in bands with my mom's brother. My dad married my mom, and so I was sorta surrounded by music from the get-go. Born right into it.”

“We've gotten to do so many great things throughout the years. We've gotten to meet presidents. We've been able to go to so many wonderful awards shows and meet so many great celebrities.”

“I love every aspect of live performance and putting our shows together and approaching it from the standpoint of, 'What would we want to see if we were a fan sitting in the audience?'”

“It's such a wonderful thing for me to be able to be in there and make music with people that I love, first of all. It's something that I'm so passionate about.”

“I was raised in church, and we let our kids know who Jesus is.”

“Some of my biggest commercial musical influences would be people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, of course, Johnny Cash. People that wrote and sang their own stuff, I really admired.”

“I was an '80s child, so I grew up loving all kinds of '80s rock. I like R&B, too.”

“I guess, somewhere along the line, when we first came out, somebody thought it was a crime to be young and not wear a cowboy hat and sing country music.”

“My faith and my beliefs sustain me through all of the craziness that this life brings.”

“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'm not a perfect human being by any stretch of the imagination. But there is always this little voice inside of me that keeps me where I know I need to be.”

“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.”

“We do pretty much the same set list every night, and the show's down to certain cues because we have video and all this production and lights and everything going on.”

“There were so many years that were going by at a lightning speed that it was so hard to kinda put our heads around what was happening to us.”

“I love all kinds of music.”

“I remember as a little kid watching the Opry from the nosebleeds, so to stand onstage and be invited to be a member was really, really cool.”

“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.”

“When you get to a certain point in your career, it's easy to just phone it in, to get complacent. If you're not careful, you can stop challenging yourself.”

“I draw inspiration from everywhere, whether it's country, R&B, gospel.”

“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.”