We've heard it all before. What we hadn't heard before Jackson released his first major label album in 1990 is his uniquely honest way of stripping down a song to its core emotion.

Get beyond the Marlboro Man duds and there's nothing cookie-cutter about the music. Poignant and self-deprecating, Jackson's songs are almost painfully honest and real. While shyly claiming social ignorance, he's smart enough to write only what he knows. In a stagnant country-hits radio climate where singers chase the radio with sappy love ballads and honky-tonk pick-up lines, this guy strips off layer after layer of onion-skin emotions and exposes core human conditions shared by everyone. There's a Hemingway simplicity to his stories - stark, naked, timeless and purged of cliche.

The arrangements, courtesy of producer Keith Stegall are unabashedly straight country. Despite frequent requests to remix hit songs for pop and middle-of-the-road radio, Jackson steadfastly holds his ground as a consecrated disciple of George Jones.

At 45, Jackson has sold over 36 million records. Country radio chases him and he's got a stack of music awards and honors. At a stage in his career where a lot of artists would be milking it for all that it's worth, Jackson limits his performances to weekends, flying home to Nashville to spend time with his wife and three daughters. He rarely and reluctantly grants interviews. He writes when the mood hits him, he says, and it hits him a lot. In a business where songs rule and even good writers pack their discs with other writers' tunes, Jackson comes up with most of his own material. He's prolific. In 12 years he's released 11 albums, including a Christmas project and a greatest hits package.

Q. There's a simplicity to your songs that people identify with; they don't sound rubber stamped like so much of what's on the radio.

A. I think it's definitely a craft. As far as learning how to write a song, I think the more you write, the more you listen to people's songs, you get a feel for what a song is supposed to sound like. I also feel that some people just have a natural ability to write rhymes and melodies. Wherever it comes from, I don't know. I got lucky with it somehow. I know since I got children, a couple of my young daughters automatically have a way of making up songs, melodies and words that rhyme. I think it's genetic or something. I always tried to say things in a way that is more like you'd speak them and not so poetic sounding. Just kind of plain.

Q. You write a lot about yourself and the people around you. Is it ever embarrassing to, you know, give up that much information?

A. A lot of songs . . . are written about something personal. I guess I still have to go back and change lines to make it say what I want it to say. I'm not a real articulate man with words, so I have to kind of make it simple.

Q. But are there things that you just can't write about, like something about your wife?

A. If it's something bad I wouldn't (laughs). I have written some. We've had some rough times in our marriage like most people, and I've written songs about that. But if I write a sad song about something from my personal life, I might have to camouflage it a little.

Q. Ever cross out a line and say, I can't write that - she'll kill me?

A. Oh yeah (laughs). I always cross out lines. But sometimes you leave them in. The first song that I wrote when I came to Nashville was called "Home." I'd never lived anywhere but that little town when I moved up here. I wrote that song about my mom. It's just a whole bunch of facts about my parents and growing up in the house they put together. I was going to give it to her for Mother's Day, but that song ended up on one of my albums. It was a hit on the radio.

Q. As someone who writes most of his own material, what do you look for in the songs that you cover?

A. I've always been receptive to outside material. I listen to a zillion songs like everybody does when I'm preparing for an album. I try to listen to what it's saying and the melody and all, and also how it fits in with other songs I'm recording on the album.

Q. "A Little Bluer Than That," one song that you didn't write on the album "Drive," is by Irene Kelley, who grew up outside of Pittsburgh in Latrobe.

A. That's a great song. She's a good singer, she sang with me on there, too.

Q. What did you see in that song that you didn't see in a thousand others?

A. You know where I heard that thing? I flew in from work late at night, got in the car with the Grand Ole Opry on the radio, and she was doing that thing live. I'd never heard of her. It was just a little bluegrass kind of arrangement and sounded like a hit to me, not the same old same old.