I was born October 3rd in Lexington, Kentucky at Central Baptist Hospital. At the time my family lived in Lexington. My middle brother... I guess he was four years old and my oldest was about seven. My mom was a [stay-at-home-mom] and my father, I think at the time was a fireman. Then for a while, like a two-three month period, we moved to Tampa, Florida. We moved back to Kentucky, but this time we moved to Harrodsburg, which is a small, historical town probably about 45 minutes from Lexington. We lived there on a 10-acre farm... with a garden, horses, cows, chickens, and pigs. We weren't farmers, but we raised a cow... [On the farm] we had ponies and horses, played out in the woods, stuff like that. I had a wonderful childhood... great memories!
I lived in Harrodsburg until I was about nine years old. We would play cowboys and Indians [because] we had ponies and horses. [We] built forts and stuff and did a lot of sleigh riding in the winter. School was great, I played Little League and football- things were good. I was singing at church in the youth group and my mom and her friend sang in church like every other Sunday... So that's where I guess I really started singing hymns and stuff... My whole family, is just really musical; my mom, my dad, and my brothers could all sing... In the car, going places, we all sang and stuff. [My mom] sang at weddings...
Before we moved to Harrodsburg, I went to Mercer County Elementary School... until I was like just starting 4th grade. I remember being in the general music class- oh my gosh, I used to love that! We would get in there and sit on the floor and the teacher would play the piano, all these songs, and we would just sing, and sing and sing! I do remember one time the teacher singled me out and really complemented me or something. I can't exactly remember what she said, but I know that I really enjoyed going to music class in elementary school.
My father was a construction worker and he did a lot of traveling across the state of Kentucky and sometimes out of the state. [He'd help] put up sky scrapers and buildings and powerhouses and stuff. He [eventually] switched to a job of managing and running a summer camp. We moved to a place called Beattyville, it was in Lee County in the Daniel Boone National Forest, which is in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. It was beautiful up there, small foothills and mountains. We lived... about a mile away from the county line, so I went to school in another county. They had a football team and our county didn't. Me and my brother, Tim, both played football ever since we were little, so that was important to us...
I had my 10th birthday at the camp my father ran. Until I was 18, we lived in a log cabin right on the edge of a big cliff overlooking the valley. It was beautiful! [Our home] had 17 rooms! We had three bedrooms, two baths, a big loft, a dining room... it was huge! We would have a boys' camp and a girl camp- those were two separate stayings. The boy's camp and the girl's camp were from ages like 7 to 12... Then they had a junior conference, which was junior high school kids, they had dances practically every night. Then they had the senior conferences, which were [for] high school-aged kids... Usually they were for about two weeks...
It was weird [growing up at a camp], because it was sorta like I had two lives... I was way out in the country. In the summer I didn't get to see my friends a school, because I would just stay at the camp. There was no reason to leave at all- all these people coming up to talk to, play with, to meet... kids from all over the state and some of them even came from other states. I met so many people and , I don't know, I think it helped me a lot as far as talking to people. [There were] lots of cute girls... yeah... I'd get my heart broken every summer, because I would find a girlfriend and then she would leave and I wouldn't see her. That was tough. [The first time I fell in love], I think I was like 11 or 12. Then my brother [Tim] ended up with her... it just broke my heart.
[Time was the brother I was most competitive with]... now we're great friends... When I was little, really little, my big brother Jerald and I got along great. Then when I was around 13, 14, that's when he and I had, I guess, the most friction, just because of those ages differences. He was a senior in high school or something like that. I was 13 or 14 and he graduated and it was just rough. But then, like right after he left and went to Dallas, Texas to pursue a modeling career... Little boys when they're 13, 14, they think they know everything and... we irritate people sometimes, going through those growing stages..."