"When I started, I moved down to this place called Crystal Beach, Texas where you need to take a ferry from Galveston across the bay to get to this little peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico," recalls Carll. "It's this isolated coastal community with a wild assortment of people either hiding out, hanging on or getting lost-- a lot of drugs and drinking, a fair amount of violence, but at the same time a lot of really interesting people with great stories to tell. Folks in the bars there weren't necessarily interested in what I had to say as a songwriter-- they wanted to hear David Allan Coe and Merle Haggard, and other stuff they knew. So that's what I did six nights a week for four years. I haven't run into tougher crowds since. It was an initiation into becoming a performer.""My first record I did in five days, and my second one we did in twelve," Carll explains.  "This time around I had a solid month, so it was really a luxury. It was amazing to get all these talented people in the room and have them listen to me describe my vision and then go out and try to realize that and capture it on tape. My strength isn't that I have the world's most amazing voice or that I'm this incredible player -- hopefully it's that there's some aspect of my personality and my lyrics that people can relate to."