You recently played four sold-out shows at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and afterwards you went on Twitter and you said, "I'd say it was a dream come true, but I never dreamed this big." Is that true? What were you dreaming of as a kid listening to Van Halen, and what were you dreaming of as an adult professional musician?

It definitely changed. When I was a kid, there was no limit to it. You're in front of the mirror and there's a million people. I guess it needed to be that just to keep me in one place for eight hours at a time playing the guitar. But once I realized that the music I liked wasn't necessarily the music that millions of people showed up for, then the expectations changed. The dream for me at that point became more realistic, or what I thought was more realistic, in my 20s, when I was on tour with the Drive-By Truckers. First of all, I realized being a musician is not a lottery ticket. There are people who do this for a living and don't play for 10,000 people a night, and they're still doing it and they're not young anymore and they haven't quit and nobody's made them stop. The only reason they're doing that is because A) they're a little crazy, and B) they work really fucking hard. So at that point it shifted to "Okay, well, if I don't ever have to do anything else, I can be happy." That's what the dream became.

The context—why you play music in the first place—I want to keep that as intact as possible.

Food can go to mouth from this.

Yeah. Then, a few years after that, I needed a tour bus really bad. As you get up in your thirties, the van touring is not a possibility anymore. We can't all be Mike Watt. So that became the dream: to be comfortable enough to continue to tour.

So until you sold out four nights at the Ryman, you didn't think it was possible?

I didn't think that was going to happen. Not the part of me that's an adult. As a kid, yeah, you picture yourself in front of oceans of people. But once you do it for ten or fifteen years, you think, "Just give me four theaters a week and I can be alright."

One thing that's interesting about the arc of your career is you were living aspects of the rock 'n' roll fantasy before—drinking hard, playing rock shows—but once you got sober, that's when you found new tiers of success. So what is it like as the sober family man slash rock star?

There are logistical concerns. [Laughs] There are things I have to pay attention to now that I never had to pay attention to before. Scheduling. Other people's feelings. Things I have to pay attention to in advance, instead of just reacting all the time, which is what you're doing when you're living that part of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. In order to keep myself alive, I had to be pretty good at reacting. And now there's more planning ahead. That's not interesting, but that's the majority of the difference. I have to plan to keep myself busy in the down time.

What kind of stuff do you do?

I read a lot. I go to the movies a lot on off days. I exercise. I have routines that I go by. But honestly, the deeper consideration is gratitude. That's it for me, really. That fixes almost any problem that comes up. I try to think, "Well, am I being grateful enough?"





1 / 7 Chevron Chevron Photo: Joe Pugliese The Country Insurgency Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, And Sturgill Simpson

To whom?

Fate. People that work with me. My wife. The people who are running the business. The crew. The rest of my band. My family. My friends. People who will put me in their magazines and on their radio stations. Anybody. Am I being grateful enough? Because the rub between being a rock 'n' roll guy and being a family man is really in temperament. If you indulge yourself in that privilege—if you start feeling like you've earned it and stop being grateful—then you'll start making mistakes.