NOT BAD FOR A BARTENDER: (Co-write with John Rich and Vicki McGehee). "That was a last-minute kind of a deal there. We wrote that at John's house. .. John's been saying that phrase to me pretty much since ‘Redneck Woman’ hit the air. He's been looking at me every once in awhile in certain situations -- we'll be at an ASCAP dinner, or different situations, and John will say, 'Let me look: Not bad for a bartender!' We've known we were going to write this song for a long time. That's just what happens with us. It's that idea. Once the idea is there, you let it float around in your head for a few months, and you're just going to explore it, as a creative person, you're going to explore all the different scenarios that could go along with it, what angle to take ... You know, though, when we sat down to write it that day, he said, 'This is your Hag song. This is your blue collar, old-fashioned song -- to me it's the opposite of How Do You Like Me Now -- it's not that kind of a song at all. It's similar in direction, but it's more old-school than that. It's more patting yourself on the back and saying, hey, look what I've done.' I thought it was a great way to finish up the record. It's the ‘Pocahontas Proud’ of this record. And it's very simple, a very simple way to look at this. And it is simple. It's good to be simple in a song. I'm blown away every day that all of those people stand and wait in meet 'n' greet lines. I know I say, in the song, 'I can't believe how they wait in my autograph line', but it is .. I feel that way. It's simple, but it's real. We've done so much in the last year and a half, but the reality is that I'm still sitting here going, 'Wow!' I really do. I'm amazed. I get to go out there and do something I love and get paid for it and people love it. It's just amazing. Every day is amazing for us."
GOOD MORNING, HEARTACHE (Hidden track): "When John Grady brought to me the idea of putting one of those (Billie Holiday) songs on the record, I immediately said that it had to be unlisted, it had to be a silent, hidden track on there. I said it doesn't fit the flow of the record. It's a whole different ball of wax. It's a cover song. It's just ... a bonus for fans at the end of the record. I discovered Billie Holiday in a movie I watched a long time ago when I was a little kid, about a couple falling in love, and they shared a dance to a Billie Holiday tune. And I remember it being so moving. It blew my mind, the passion and the sorrow in her voice. I don't think I went out and bought her music for a few more years after that. But it was that sound. Every time I would hear that sound, I would know who it was. I tell you what, I certainly don't regret recording this song. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life, to go in a room and crowd around one microphone, and do it in one take like that. And listening back to it and hearing the room noise .. it sounds old because that's the way they recorded then. To know there's no mixing. You don't mix that. It's done. As soon as the bow stops sliding across that fiddle, it's just over. There's nothing we can do to that song. It just is what it is ... We did three performances on it. The first one they got levels on, and they'd holler over the thing, take one step forward and one step back, blah-blah-blah. The second one was perfect, except for a door closed, and we could hear it and it ruined the track. That take we got is the third take. And I think the second one was the better one, but that's how it goes when you're recording something like that."