Bluegrass Quotes

I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals.

I'm one of the people who believe the great lines come from either Western or bluegrass music.

I like for it to be mountain music or old-time country music or traditional bluegrass. Either one will fit me. It's traditional, basically.

I have no doubt that most people who listen to Alison Krauss and say they like bluegrass have never heard real bluegrass played in the traditional manner, and probably don't even know who Bill Monroe is.

I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.

You learn from music, from watching great athletes at work - how disciplined they are, how they move. You learn these things by watching a shortstop at work, how he concentrates on one thing at a time. You learn from classic music, from the blues and jazz, from bluegrass. From all this, you learn how to sustain a great line without bringing in unnecessary words.

Speaking of WAMU, [bluegrass and old time music DJ] Ray Davis did a lot of work there. I've know Ray, I guess for 50 years - 40, or 50 years. And, he plays a lot of my records.

I think Earl Scruggs playing propelled bluegrass and Bill Monroe's music to the level that - where we're all still talking about it.

I realized a lot of my friends were going to nightclubs and listening to house music. I was hanging out with them and going to clubs as well but I didn't really understand that kind of music. I was listening to country music and was heavily into Hank Williams, bluegrass, and Bob Dylan. So I just decided I really needed to understand what this music I was hearing in the clubs was all about.

I wouldn't call myself a woman in bluegrass. I haven't really been a part of the world for a while. It's just been a big influence on who I am today.

There was a band in San Diego, Bluegrass Etc, that played a weekly gig. My parents would take my brother and me every Saturday night for 7 or 8 years. Sean and I started taking lessons with them and they gave us a great foundation in bluegrass instrumentation. They were the lens through which I saw music for a very long time.

I like big shows, a lot of volume and a lot of energy. I love electric instruments. But I do love mixing those with bluegrass instruments and cranking those up, too, with a little bit of that rock energy.

I think the great country songs mixed with some of that bluegrass instrumentation - and surrounding all that with a little bit of a rock vibe and energy - is the kind of music I make.

My gift's primarily literary. That being said, I ended up a musician. By the time I made the bluegrass record...I'm more impressed with myself when I push the envelope musically than I am when I push it literality.

If you looked at my iPod, you would get a trip out of all the different music, from the real heavy metal to bluegrass to classical.

I was always drawn to the roots music, bluegrass, blues, early rock - Sun Records, Elvis [Presley]. And I still love that music to this day. Memphis never gets the credit. It's much more musically rich than Nashville ever will be. Nashville manufactured that hokey-hillbilly image way back.

It's different now but I enjoy it more than I did then. I think I appreciate it more now and I love playing acoustically. This is the way I started. Herb and I met each other forty years ago when we were both eighteen years old, playing bluegrass, and that's what drew me into music, and I enjoyed every particular part of my career. But now I enjoy it because it's the twilight of my career, where I can play what I want and I can play when I want and where I want. And that's the greatest part it all. So it's sort of a right that I've earned. I can record records the way I want to.

Listening is like running down a mountain on a switchback trail, the sound of surprise generating its own momentum. There’s a punk glee inside the bluegrass craft–and a punk vehemence inside the bluegrass smile.

It's true that bluegrass is a virtuosic form and asks that of its performer. Old-time music is older rawer and purer. It's less stylized. We don't solo. Well sometimes we do, but it's different it has more to do with rock-and-roll than bluegrass does.

My mother's a singer and my mother's father is a singer, and everyone on both sides are all country-western bluegrass musicians.

I always loved bluegrass, but there was so much I didn't know about American country music in respect to the origins of this country. It was interesting to see the evolution of it.

I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like 'Letterman' and 'The View,' and I've heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven't felt any negativity toward me or my music.

When I hear bluegrass today, I hear so many new sounds in it. It's almost like country music in a way.

I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air.

The bluegrass community... can be very strict. I didn't know if I'd be welcomed into the bluegrass community or not, but I think they judge you very fairly... I felt really welcome.

Early Bluegrass is my favorite kind of music, not to many people know that.

It was so much fun playing simple American bluegrass. I got to meet Doc Watson.

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

I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.

The grand old lady of bluegrass? Well, wouldn't that be a wonderful title to have? I hope I do enough to earn it some day

I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and am a product of a family that were jazz aficionados and also very interested in progressive politics. And so I had a lot of artists and musicians in my home. Lots of Latin music, folk, and jazz and blues, bluegrass-type of stuff. Painters and stuff like that.

I just hope bluegrass entertainers take care of their music and take care of their fans. If you don't practice, the man next door who is practicing will beat you.

Bluegrass is wonderful music. I'm glad I originated it.

Most of the music I've become interested in is hybrid in its originsClassical music, of course, is unbelievably hybrid. Jazz is an obvious amalgam. Bluegrass comes from eighteenth-century Scottish and Irish folk music that made contact with the blues. By exploring music, you're exploring everything.

When you're a kid, you listen to what your family is listening to. For my family, it was bluegrass.

I wanted to use some kind of name so people would know where I was from. So I took the name "bluegrass." There is not a prettier name in the whole world.

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

I hope you came out to hear some bluegrass music. If you didn't, we're both in the wrong place.

You know, for most of its life bluegrass has had this stigma of being all straw hats and hay bales and not necessarily the most sophisticated form of music. Yet you can't help responding to its honesty. It's music that finds its way deep into your soul because it's strings vibrating against wood and nothing else.

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.

Well, Peter Rowan and I had plans to form a band when he left Bill Monroe. I always thought it was going to be a bluegrass band, but I guess when Peter left Bill Monroe he had had enough of bluegrass. He had written some songs and of course the Beatles were a big influence back then. So, we decided to something different and it ended up being that.

It was around that time, early 60s. There were like three kindred spirits in New Jersey. I had two friends who played folk music, old-time music and bluegrass and we started a little band called the Garret Mountain Boys.

I don't try to approach things any differently, songwriting-wise, regardless of what I'm doing. I try to write whatever the best thing is that I'm doing that day. If I'm working on a pop song, I'm working on a pop song to the best of my ability. If I'm working on a bluegrass song, it's the same thing. They're not really different parts of the brain.

I really tried to push every genre that I could into this record. I wanted every song to have this feel, where as soon as the listener tunes in, they say "That's CoJo, that's Cody right there." That being said, it is a little different. There's Americana, there's Bluegrass, there's some rock, there's some really George Jones-style stuff on it, slow-style Ray Price country elements, there's some modern country, a little of this and a little of that. We tried to push a lot for show versatility, because I grew up with a lot of versatility in my music.

Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass.

I listen to and I play all kinds of music, and I'm interested in jazz and in bluegrass - I like it all - but Cuban music speaks to me in a certain way.

I've always wanted to make a bluegrass album.

As a teacher with over thirty years of experience, I've found that students are hungry for material that goes beyond simply learning tune after tune. In fact, my students suggested a good portion of the material presented here. This lesson should be an indispensable aid to the aspiring bluegrass banjoist.

I started playing bluegrass with my family, so there were the G, C and D chords. I was playing a Martin acoustic because that's what Carter Stanley of the Stanley Brothers played. Then I got into the really raw blues of Hound Dog Taylor and started on electric guitar.

I play these sort of comical instruments I invented, like the electric rake and the electric plunger. I do a lot of almost stand-up comedy material. Just the juxtaposition of the different styles in itself sometimes is funny. Like, I do sort of an acoustic version of 'Purple Haze' that has some bluegrass licks in it.