Quotes About Bluegrass

People like bluegrass. It's had a following amongst a lot of hip and young people. A lot of college kids like bluegrass.

Mostly I listen to old-time music, some bluegrass, some Americana stuff, too many to name. But of the younger acts, there are The Freight Hoppers, who were big in the '90s, and The Foghorn Stringband from Oregon, and there's a lot of young string bands coming up now, basically punkers who play acoustic instruments forming new bands.

I grew up playing bluegrass as a youngster, and I'm happy that I did.

I'm very proud of all the bluegrass-oriented albums. It just reminded me and my fans that I should always record acoustic music and country records, along with anything else that I might want to do.

I base my roots and history in old blues, old country and old bluegrass, and I like rock 'n' roll, and somehow it all came together, and that is what I am playing now.

I laid my country music aside for quite a while... because bluegrass audiences didn't care to hear it. But it just kept haunting me.

The local music community here was dying for a place to record, so we started doing acoustic, folk and bluegrass and then did rock projects for other bands, as well as for my son Tal and my own work.

I loved all kinds of Bluegrass music. Sonya Isaacs was a big influence; she's a Bluegrass Gospel singer, but she's also done a lot in the Country world just from backup and songwriter and as an artist. Also, the Dixie Chicks were a big influence. Just all of those 90s and early 2000s Country voices.

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.

I don't really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I'm not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am - I don't listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence.

The music scene in Michigan is really folky and bluegrass, but my parents played a lot of disco. They really liked to dance.

I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore.

Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests.

In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.

I went to Appalachian State University, which was very bluegrass- and folk-oriented.

When I was playing bluegrass, I was living down in West Hollywood - starving.

I learned to love bluegrass, but my first love stayed hard country.

It's nice knowing we're putting the banjo, the fiddle, the steel, and the mandolin back out front.

Growing up in a bluegrass or acoustic-oriented world, the musicians become so focused on performance, as far as playing. We tend to overanalyze the notes, so you're always trying to sharpen everything up.

It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians.

I think, until I was 16, classical music had just seemed like a little bit of a rhythmic wasteland for me. Coming from bluegrass, where one conducts oneself rhythmically, it seemed like such a different approach, and at that point the difference that I was noticing was a real turn off to me.

All along, I did what I was comfortable doing, which was to play the music I enjoyed and try to stretch the parameters a bit. Country and bluegrass and folk were my foundation.

Bluegrass has a very, very strict musical form. Once you start to dilute it, it disappears.

I was always into bluegrass as a kid. Basically, I like music that has a basic simple structure and that has a lot of emotion and feel. Bluegrass and other old time music fits the bill, as well as what became punk - they both kind of have a similar framework.