Released last September, "Strong Enough" is Tritt's second album for Columbia Records, and his second release since taking a two-year hiatus from the music business. That hiatus ended with the releases of his 2000 Columbia debut, "Down the Road I Go."

"When I came off the road at the end of '98, I really wasn't having a lot of fun," Tritt said in his record company biography. "But when we started back with the last album and it began snowballing, I started having fun again.

"I've been having a blast. Even compared to this time last year, there's a feeling that we're kind of at a whole new level. I see a new excitement with the crowds, the crowds are getting bigger and bigger every night, I see an attentiveness that maybe wasn't there a few years ago."

Tritt said he spent four or five months writing material for "Strong Enough."

"We had a little retreat down in Georgia for part of this album, where we brought in about ten songwriters," he said. "Some I had never written with before, some of them I had. We put them up in these little cottages not too far from where I live, and I would go over every morning for most of a week."

This year, Tritt visited with some troops and their families at Fort Riley, Kan., and Fort Bragg, N.C., according to his official website.

In April, the Department of Veterans Affairs presented Tritt with a Public Service award for his long-standing support of veterans and veterans' issues.