Uncle Kracker

“I just want to make timeless stuff.”

“Nothing really surprises me - ever.”

“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've been on plenty of tours where there's no interaction between bands at all. But when you're out with Chesney, all day every day, there's something fun happening.”

“Better Days' suits me best because I'm not that aggressive and I'm not that confident and I'm just that much more laid-back.”

“I don't know why, but you didn't hear a lot of sad, depressing, ballad-y stuff coming out of the '70s. It was a lot of happy songs.”

“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.”

“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.”

“At the end of the day, people want to have fun more than they want to cry.”

“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.”

“I remember when my first record came out. McGrath and Sugar Ray were on the same label, and McGrath did a cameo on the 'Follow Me' video, which helped me get the video on VH1.”

“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've got two daughters and a wife. I more or less have to keep it together. They keep me in line pretty much. I think if I didn't have that, I'd be an idiot.”

“I just quit eating like a dummy.”

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