Chris Stapleton

America's military allow the rest of us to do what we do.

College didn't stick, so I worked odd jobs, but I've always written songs and played music. I actually met a guy who was a songwriter, which I didn't realize was a real job.

I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.

I didn't know they would pay you money to sit in a room and write songs for other people. I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found that out, that that could be a job, I thought, 'That's the job for me. I gotta figure out how to do that.'

I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I'm not Chuck Berry or Bill Monroe. Guys like that are from outer space.

I like places that have history in the sense of - you feel responsible to it.

Country music is one of those places where we support each other and prop each other up.

It's nice to see people invest in what you do as an artist and sing the songs back at you and feel something. You get to feel something more than what you were feeling when you made the record.

I like songs that make me feel tough. Like 'Back in Black.' You want to hear it again and get in a fight.

I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.

I'm always trying to do as many different things as I can, just so when one is not doing so hot, maybe the other is still there.

It is a really interesting to hear yourself on the radio. I've gotten to hear myself in different capacities. I've heard myself on Sirius XM on the bluegrass channels, and on WSM and other places.