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There’s a lot going on in this track, and most of it comes from me experimenting in my studio at home. There are marching snares at the outro and a big bass drum. I love the way it feels. When I got together with Marcus and Annie to write, we started with the groove and just started mumbling, throwing out words, like putting a puzzle together. Bits of music, bits of words – it all just came together.

My 12-year-old son Ross plays "power" guitar on this track. Ever since his brother Ryan played on my last album, he’s been asking when he could play on one of my records. There’s one little place where this song breaks down and I let him come in and play, as I call it, "power chords." It fit him well, because he plays that grungy kind of stuff.

I feel very strongly about this song because it’s so positive "Faith is important to all of us in our everyday lives. Having the kind of strong faith in a person that’s described in this song is a powerful thing. I’m bragging on my co-writer, because this song is a great example of Bill Anderson’s lyrics. He creates strong images; they’re like mini-movies. I love to write with him and this is one of my favorites of the songs we’ve written together.

I’d play this song for different guys on the bus when we were touring last year and every time, whoever I played it for would say, "Is that an old Bob Wills song?" But I had just written it.

We were in the studio and had about 45 minutes left on the session. I hadn’t planned to record "I Just Do." But we had time and I thought we should try to cut one more track if we could. I picked up a guitar and all the players were around me and I said, "We could do something like this" and started chunking "I Just Do." Everyone said, "Let’s do that." So the guys wrote a chart, made copies real quick, talked it through and then turned the machine on. We got it in one take. You can tell everyone is having fun. They all had a chance to stretch out and play, and that’s why the credits list them all as featured players.

That’s a different one for me one, no question. My wife Caryn runs our publishing business, and she sends me on assignments every once in a while. This time she told Rick and me that we needed to write a country mambo. We went off and wrote this, originally about a kid riding in the back seat of a car with her parents and her mom looking for a fast song on the radio. The minute we wrote it I heard the horns, which you don’t usually find in country music.

I was talking to Garth on the phone one afternoon, and brought the song up. "What if I were to hypothetically ask you to come and sing on a song for my album? I got a tune I’d love you to play around with. It’s real left field, " I said. "I’ll send you a disc and if it strikes you as weird and you don’t feel like doing it, you won’t hurt my feelings." Well, he listened to it, called me back and said he’d sing on the record. We had a great time.

Jim and I wrote this several years ago. It came real close to being on the Two Teardrops album, but got bumped. I always believed in this song and believed it was a hit. Certain songs are supposed to make it their own way and time. It didn’t fit on my last project, but this time it did. We didn’t have any story songs that were even close to being as powerful as this song. It’s a sweet story, about a child’s relationship with his mom. I really do enjoy these kinds of story songs that are a reflection of our lives. When somebody hears your song and says, "Man, that’s my life. You’re talking about me" – that’s a great compliment for a songwriter.

This one is just fun. We listed all these current icons, with the idea that they do what they do and make it look easy, so why can’t I forget you and make it look easy. A lot of these people are my heroes - Michael Jordan, Nolan Ryan, Chet Atkins, Wayne Gretzky. I had to sneak in some friends like Jay Leno and Chet and Nolan Ryan. I know Mark McGuire too. He’s going to give me a hard time over this song, I guarantee.

Joe is a true country music songwriter, and he keeps me on that path when we write together. We came up with a real honest, simple country song.

I think this one is the sleeper on the album. It doesn’t have a heavy message, but it really captures the details of life and love for a regular guy. Bergen White did an incredible job with the string arrangement. They come in on the verse, which is unusual, because you usually hear strings on the chorus. The song starts very simply, just a piano, and then builds.

This song is nothing but fun. Clint produced this at the Capitol studio in Hollywood. It was my first time in that famous building, which was a treat. We had some of the best session players in the world playing on this track, and the song really shows off the musicianship of everyone involved.

I purposely recorded this in a low key for my voice, to make it darker sounding and haunting. I’m not pushing the vocals at all. We use drum loops and castanets. Joey Schmidt plays accordion. All of that adds to its Mexican sound. This is the first time that I wrote with Rodney Crowell. We’ve known each other for years and always threatened to write together. Finally we did.

This is very challenging vocally for me, with its falsetto licks. It’s a big sing along, with a repetitious chorus, so you latch on to it pretty quickly. I brought in a gospel chorus. And I got to play B-Bender guitar. Anyone who knows me as a guitar player will know that I played B-bender in a lot of my earlier songs. It allows you to pull the tone up one whole step on the B note, by pulling down on the guitar strap. It’s a neat mechanism and I hadn’t done it in a while, so I really enjoyed using it again on this song.

I’m in love with this song. When I was a kid in Indiana, we lived right by the railroad tracks. I would lie in bed at night and the train would go by and rattle our house. I loved that. That image came back to me from my childhood, and Marcus and I used it as an analogy for a guy looking at his life.

I want to do guitar stuff on every album. It’s important that I keep showing the guitar side of what I do. One night I was just playing around with some sounds, just trying out some new equipment in my studio at home. I came up with this little groove and turned the machine on. I left some space for someone else to play. My son Ryan, who played on "So Much" on my last record, heard what I had and asked to play – not for the album, but for fun. I recorded him and we put it on the record. My brother Terry plays a little percussion, so it made sense to title the song "Bloodlines."