00:00Nashville has become home for you, but I want to go and talk about Taylor Mills, Kentucky.
00:04And what are some memories from your childhood that you hold close to you and something that's special about your town?
00:10Oh my gosh, I mean, that's the town that made me.
00:12I think about my grandparents a lot.
00:14They knew that country music was what I wanted to do.
00:18And even today I was texting with my mom and I was like,
00:20can you believe that I'm singing with Rascal Flatts at CMA Fest in the stadium?
00:24And even all these years later, it's still just a very, very wild thing to think about.
00:29All of the shows, everybody in Taylor Mills, they knew me as the country singer.
00:33So I'm very, very proud to be from there.
00:36And it's definitely the heart of who I am.
00:39You know, I think for me, it was the neighborhood I grew up in that really shaped me.
00:44I mean, I grew up on the same street as my buddies that I'm still best friends with today.
00:48And we went to school together.
00:50We played baseball together.
00:51We went to church together.
00:52We did everything together.
00:54So I think just that growing up in that little pocket is really what shaped me.
01:01So, yeah.
01:01Well, yeah.
01:02I mean, I feel lucky that the places I'm from and the places I live are places that a lot of people from around the world would love to live.
01:08You know, growing up in Arizona, my mom always wanted to go travel a little bit.
01:12My dad was always like, we live in a place where people from all around the world are traveling to be here for the vacation.
01:17Why would we go anywhere?
01:18We did it.
01:19I never flew in a plane until much later.
01:22You know, as a kid, we'd drive to Colorado to go ski at a place called Purgatory.
01:27And we'd drive to Lake Powell to go out on the lake.
01:30That was it.
01:30We just kind of lived in this little area, the four corner states.
01:32And it's just memories of being out in the desert as a kid.
01:35You know, we had a lot of desert where we lived.
01:38Even though we lived kind of near stuff, there was a lot of empty lots and stuff that no one had developed.
01:43So I cut grass all summer and saved up and bought a go-kart for 200 bucks.
01:48And I was 11 years old and I had complete freedom.
01:51I mean, I just, and my buddy had one too.
01:53So his brother ended up getting one and we'd just be gone.
01:55I mean, I'd get in that go-kart and just be out in the desert just, you know, the whole day.
02:00And we'd pull a PVC pipes in the front of them and we could put, you know, shoot bottle rockets at each other, you know, in the desert.
02:06We weren't shooting each other with BB guns.
02:09It was just wild.
02:11My dad, I remember my dad, I'd come home, he had this lazy boy, which I now have in my house.
02:15My dad passed away a while ago.
02:17But I haven't seen the lazy boy.
02:18He'd be there and he'd have like these things connected to him and you'd be listening to like a set tape that's like a breathing thing.
02:23And like, because he had high blood pressure, I'm always like, what's he doing in there?
02:26And now I realize the reason he had high blood pressure was because of me.
02:29My son does stuff and I'm like, you know, watch him play hockey and how physical it is.
02:34I'm like, I need, my blood pressure's going high now.
02:35You're like, that's what I was like.
02:37I'm sorry, dad.
02:37I tortured my dad and now my son's torturing me.
02:40But yeah, just going up in the desert.
02:42I mean, just sunsets and sunrises and just being out there and the freedom of a, you know, preteen to be out there on a go-kart cruising through the desert is pretty great.
