Growing up, for me, started off pretty normal. I lived in Pikeville, Kentucky; it’s where my whole family is from - every body there is pretty much a coal miner or a railroad man. My dad worked on the railroad, nothing out of the ordinary. My mom was a stay at home mom, my dad worked on the railroad everyday, but his dream was music. He would work 60 hours a week and he would drive down to Nashville, which was like 6 hours away and he would record songs all weekend, then he’d drive back home and work all week the next week. He did this for years. I was three years old, I remember, and he came home and was so excited and screaming at me and my mom and nobody could understand what the hell he was saying, and finally, when she got him calmed down, we found out he was working on the railroad and back in those days you could have what was called a tri-state hit. When he’d been out recording songs, someone had put one out to see how it would do on the radio, and he ended out getting a tri-state hit in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. The next thing you know, here we go Beverly hillbilly style, and we packed up and moved to Nashville. From then on, everything kind of changed. Bob by Bare was coming to the house and Rick Phelps and Craig Wiseman, and Dale Reeves, these big songwriters, singers and artists. They just became family; we didn’t have family in Nashville. Back then, country music was a family and you had to be accepted before you really got to play in this business. Dad was quickly accepted and those people really just took him under their wing and started teaching him the ropes.

The music business is very, very difficult and it takes a certain type of person to be in it. My mother married a man that worked on the railroad, I think now, as I am a musician, I understand more of what she was going through, because it’s damn near impossible to find girls that can understand this business. It’s not a 9 to 5 job. It’s 24 hours a day, my phone is always on, the record label calling me. So, my mom and dad got divorced.

My dad stuck with his dream. That’s the one thing I learned from him, if you’re going to start something, you need to see it through, no matter what. My mom is my hero, she took over there, and we never left Nashville. She raised me here. I think from an early age everybody knew that music was what I was going to do. I don’t think anybody was confused about that. I was constantly stealing my dad’s mike and running around the house. I was always had a guitar in my hand from the time I was four, it didn’t matter what I was doing; I had a guitar in my hand. She let me grow up here, which is amazing. She could have taken me back to Pikeville, and I’d have been away from the music business, but she let me stay here with all these great musicians and artists that were always around my family, still coming around the house and helping raise me, basically.

From birth, that was my life. If you’re going to be a doctor, go to med school; if you’re going to be a lawyer, go to law school. I’ve been around the country music community all my life, there was never any doubt this is what I was going to be. I just grew up in the business. The first time I went on the radio, I was three, my dad went on a radio tour during Christmas time and he took me with him. I sang Alabama ’s Dixie Land Delight live on the radio. We still have the recording of that. The funny thing is, just this past year; I got to play some shows with Randy Owen, who I just idolized. “Mr. Owen,” I said, “In 1983, Dixieland Delight came out and, to this day, I still play that in my set. Technically, I’ve been playing it as long as you have.”

When I was 15, I put my first band together. At 17, I got my first record label and I was ready to go. My parents who were still best friends and are to this day said, ‘No.’ My dad had watched how he and his crew had been drug through the grates. At this point, country music was changing - it was beginning to be more of a business-oriented organization. My dad understood he was a part of it. He watched it, he was watching a young kid get manipulated and he said, “If they want you now, they are going to want you when you have an education. So it was a stipulation, if I was going to do music, my mom and dad said I needed to go to college. I went to West Kentucky University on a football scholarship and ended out playing lacrosse, I was lacrosse captain for West Kentucky. In my junior year, we were approached by the same record label. Dad was okay with that, mom was okay with that and said, ‘go ahead and get a promissory note to get a developmental deal. That way, for your last year of college, you can work with the record label during your off time and figure out what you want to do with your career.’ That’s what we did. At that point, I didn’t even know how much work went into music. I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll get to sleep in and all I gotta do is play a show here and there and I’m gonna be Garth Brooks.’

A week after that, 9/11 happened. I don’t even think, to this day, I understand how badly that shook my whole life, everything I believed in. My dad was in the Army, my grandpa was in the Army, and my other grandpa was in the Air Force, all my uncles served in the Army in combat.. It was something that was driven in my head growing up; patriotism was something that my family doesn’t take lightly. Our family business is music and that’s a dream, in America we’re allowed to dream so we owe that, we owe our whole business to this country and any time that things happened that they need able bodies to stand up, I’m going to be there. I dropped out of college, I dropped my record deal and I enlisted in the United States Marine Corp. In nine months, I was in Iraq; I was there for a year. I came home for 4 months and then was involved in a special operations push in Afghanistan. I was special operations reconnaissance scout in the United States Marine Corp. We headed out to Afghanistan. I remember the last thing I said before I left, ‘It can’t be that bad, guys, it can’t be worse than Iraq.’ I ate those words every day we were there. We got there and it was definitely worse than Iraq. If I can describe it, it was hell. Iraq was bad, anytime, combat and war is bad. We did 111 missions in Iraq and brought every man home, something we were very proud of, something no other Special Forces unit had done. There are great Special Forces units out there Navy Seals, Army Rangers, Air Force Para rescue. We did more Marine missions than we had done since Viet Nam. When we got to Afghanistan, we started getting ambushed every day, two and a half weeks straight. One night, I guess we lost our luck. We were never really scared of combat when we went to Afghanistan; we’d already seen it a lot. It’s hell. You don’t really ever get used to it, you just know what’s in store. You get used to what the smells and sounds are of combat. But you never get used to losing a friend. In a unit as small as were are second LAR, which is what we are second light over recon, we’re very small. We work three man teams, 6 man sections, so that only leave 16 recon scouts. We trained together everyday for two years; we fought together for a year in Iraq. We were so proficient we didn’t even have to talk when we went out. We knew what to do. It was just eerie how we learned each other. One night, a five man recon patrol went out and was ambushed by twenty-six Taliban. One of us was injured and was crawling for cover, the enemy had focused their fire on him for the kill when one of my best friends, Corporal Ronald Payne, jumped up from his position and charged the enemy. I truly believe that the men and women who fought in these two wars we have going on right now will go down in history right next to the greatest generations. No more has been asked of our military that is being asked now. I just can’t explain how great of a man Ron Payne was. He did not make it home. He was killed that night in Afghanistan. When we surveyed his gear there was only one thing underlined in his Bible, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for a friend.’ That’s the guy he was. We stayed there and continued doing missions. About a month later, the platoon came to me and asked me if I’d start writing songs, they knew I played music. I started trying to write a song for Ron. I’d never tried to write a song about someone so great. I couldn’t get it right, I couldn’t put it into words; I couldn’t descriptively describe how amazing Ron was. He was just such a good man that I couldn’t put it into words to really have people get a visual through words of how great he was. We’d be looking for some place to get drunk; Ron would be looking for a Bible study. He wasn’t just worried about our physical lives he was worried about our spiritual lives. Anybody that’s not just worried about what happens to you here on earth, but what happens to you afterwards, that is someone that truly loves you. He worried about all of us like that, each one; he really loved all of us. I sat down trying to write this thing and I got about halfway through it and I was pretty happy with that. They told me this was my last mission in Afghanistan, I just didn’t realize how true that was until later on. I was going home, back to my music career, my time was up.

We started doing convoy ops, which we had done a thousand times. We got about 20 feet inside Kandamar. That’s the last thing I remember, just ‘Boom’ and I woke up a month later. They told me I had broken my back from my L1 to my L5 and had shattered all my discs in between and that I’d be paralyzed from my waist down for the rest of my life. There was nothing I could do. Sometimes I would just pass out from the pain and that was while I was on morphine. The bones, the way I’d broken my back, if I moved even the slightest of an inch, it would rub together. That was internal so even with the braces they put on me, my backbones were rubbing together, even when I breathed. The morphine quit working and they were using dilauted. I was just laying there on drugs and drugs and more drugs. They were going to go in and fuse my back, which would screw the bones together which wouldn’t help anything for the feeling into my legs. I didn’t have a spinal injury but the way that my back was broken it was pulling on my spine so that I couldn’t feel my legs. Basically they just told me, ‘Hey just find a wheelchair. There’s nothing we can do for ya.’ I don’t think I ever believed that, though. Like I said, my family business is a dream, so I’ve always been a dreamer. If someone tells me something I don’t like, I don’t ever believe it until it’s been proven that that’s the right thing. Usually, I think if you work hard enough at something, nobody can prove you wrong when you want something that bad. I never believed that that was the end. Luckily, my mom was outside one day talking to a nurse who had just transferred in from Bethesda. My mom was telling her my story and what had happened with me, and the nurse said, ‘That sounds like something that can be fixed, have you heard of kyphoplasty?’ My mom was like, ‘What’s that.’ And she went to the computer and googles it and then goes in and asks my doctor. My doctor looked at her like she’d said a cuss word, ‘We don’t do that surgery on 25 year olds and yada yada yada.’ So, finally with help from my unit my mom persuaded them to send me to Vanderbilt, which has the second in the nation doctor, which does the surgery. They put four pounds of cement in my back. Pretty much reconstructed all of my lumbars.. Four days after my surgery I had the first feeling in my legs that I’d had in nine months. Six weeks after the surgery they had me back up walking, six months after the surgery I was walking without the help of a walker.

A year and a half after they told me I’d never walk again, I was back in the studio cutting songs. There were still braces and walkers I had to use, but I was back making music again. Two years afterwards, I started working on my first CD. Put out Friday Night Fireside and it did real well for us. Put out Break Out and it did even better for us, and now I’m getting to work on the second CD and Reminiscing comes out on April 13.

The biggest thing is my life is not music right now, I don’t think it ever will be, the biggest thing in my life is making sure the men and woman who come back from fighting overseas to serve our country are taken care of from the time they enlisted, time they are commissioned, to the time we put them in the ground. I work with four foundations that try to make sure that happens. It’s something that I have to do; it’s my work, its driven inside of me. The great thing is I get to live my dream and do what I love while doing it.

I’ve just been blessed in so many ways. I can’t even start to tell you. I can sit here and tell you the story about how I was injured and how bad that has been, but the blessings that came from it were worth more than any of the turmoil I went through with the injury.

I would do every bit of it all over again. God understands that I have a hard head and I don’t always get the message when someone tells me, but if I live it, I definitely get it. He knew what my mission in life was supposed to be. Going through what I went through and living it everyday it was driven into my head what my goal and what my true dream was and that was to make sure the 1% of our men and women who give everything for us are taken care of until they don’t need us anymore then God will take care of them from there.

One of my favorite quotes is from Ronald Reagan. He said, “Most people go through life wondering if they made a difference. United States Marines don’t have to ask that question.” I really feel like that is not just in this time we’re in now, I don’t think that statement is just for Marines. I believe that statement should be broadened to all of our fighting men and women. What we’ve done in Afghanistan and Iraq is more that substance. We’ve changed people’s lives, we’ve given people tools to better themselves. We haven’t just given people fish, we’ve taught them to fish. We’ve given them democracy, which was the greatest thing this country ever got.

Everybody needs to understand that we are setting up freedom from war in the future. In the history of the world, no two democratic countries have ever gone to war against each other. If we go out and help our enemies see the light of democracy, we will make sure we do anything we can that the world is okay, but if you mess with us, if you hurt our people, we will be the worst nightmare you’ve ever had in your life.

I’ve seen it. When the forces of the United States work together, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen in your life.

I just got back over the holidays entertaining the troops. This was different for me. The first two times I went over there, it left me forever changed. It was silly to think any different. I was completely changed by the time I came back. This time was therapy for me. This time, I didn’t have to take a weapon, I didn’t have to fight. I got to have more of a Chaplin type role where I got to just sit with the guys and girls and talk to them. I got to answer a lot of their questions. The greatest fear of combat is the fear of the unknown.. The first question I had when I went back over there was, ‘Oh, my God, did I look this young when we went over here?’

People don’t talk about the wars here, they don’t think about the wars here. They don’t have to because our military is so great. Right now we’re fighting two wars. You don’t even feel it here. You still go out on Friday and Saturday and have a beer. You still come home from work every night and hug and kiss your wife and kids. You go out everyday and you’re not worried about someone blowing up a car bomb on the side of the road. You may take a train in the morning and you’re not worried about someone blowing that train up. People fly everyday and are not worried that what happened on 9/11 is going to happen again. Why do we not worry about it? Because for the past eight years our military men and women have made it so safe for us that we don’t have to worry about it. They are fighting so well over there, we don’t have to think about it over here. I’ve been to France ; I’ve been to all these other countries who didn’t stand up beside us when we went to war on terror. And it’s not that safe there. They do have curfews and they do have air raid sirens and practices and stuff like that. We don’t have to do that here. The one thing we made sure of was that they did not terrorize our greatest asset and that is our freedom. That’s why I think our men and women who fight for us are owed everything by us and that’s my goal. I want everybody that ever puts a uniform on and goes over there to fight for me to know that I’ll be here fighting for them.

With my first album I feel like I was a fresh Marine playing a country album. I really hadn’t found my niche. I think that with my next album, it’s 100% me. I’m producing it. I’m writing most of it. I want it to be 100% who I am. I’m a country artist who is also a United States Marine.. We’ve been testing it on national radio stations and it’s been undefeated. I wrote the video that will be on CMT in April. My fans got to know me and about my past from the last album. I want them to know who I am now with my new album. I believe you write what you live and you live what you write. You sing songs that you understand because how else can you effectively get that point across to people if you’ve never been there and done that.

I made a promise to myself when I was in the hospital that if I ever walked again, I was going to be happy for the rest of my life. I was going to do what made me happy for the rest of my life. What makes me happy is music. My whole being is wrapped up in this career. I can’t explain what it’s like to do what you love. You don’t have a lot of time on this earth. Why would you spend the small amount of time doing something you hate? Why don’t you wake up every morning and do what you love. I have bills, but I’m not willing to trade in smiling everyday for a big mortgage and a big house or any of those things. I’m happy with who I am and I’m happy with what I have. I’m just happy smiling everyday.