Top 60 Bluegrass Quotes

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 got to sing with Placido Domingo… I got to sing with Aaron Neville, who is one of my favorites. Got to sing with Brian Wilson, one of the great high tenors. And Ricky Skaggs, a bluegrass tenor. I’m also proud of my musical friendship with Emmylou Harris.

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 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.

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 had some good teachers. One of the greatest teachers I’ve had is bluegrass music: going back and listening to Bill Monroe’s music, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs. When I was with Ralph Stanley I learned a lot from him.

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

It is a really interesting to hear yourself on the radio. I’ve gotten to hear myself in different capacities. I’ve heard myself on Sirius XM on the bluegrass channels, and on WSM and other places.

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 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.

I was in a bluegrass band. I made two records with a band called the SteelDrivers. They were nominated for two Grammys. I then I was in a rock band called the Junction Brothers; we made kind of ’70s hard rock music.

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.

That’s what I love about Nashville and the music community – seeing kids around acoustic music and bluegrass picking parties is the best.

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.

The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You’ll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves.

I started at such a young age learning every style of music, the country and the bluegrass and the western swing and the rock – everything.

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 love bluegrass music, I love acoustic music, and I try at the right times to push that a little bit.

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.

We have to make a living and you can’t do that playing bluegrass.

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

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

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.

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.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

I was never into the Bluegrass, Bill Monroe and stuff like that.

There are so many wonderful, wonderful musicians in the world, I cannot possibly make a distinction between the fact that they might play classical music, or bluegrass, or Irish traditional, or Indian music.

Improvisation is an important part of bluegrass, and I would hasten to add that classical music wasn’t always such an improvisational void. Back in the day, everyone’s cadenzas were improvised, and improvisation was taught in conservatories.

I actually grew up singing bluegrass gospel.

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.

Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.

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

I think what people call genre is just a question of orchestration. So, for instance, with Punch Brothers, you look at that band and say that’s a bluegrass band, when really it’s an orchestration choice.

I don’t know that my voice ever makes sense anywhere, necessarily. I would sing bluegrass music, and I don’t fit in there; I would sing rock music, and I’m probably a little too hillbilly for that. And country, I’m too much rock n’ roll for there sometimes.

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

All of the plants that we do not consider food that are safe for the human body to digest, we don’t eat because they’re sour and bitter. The reason why you don’t eat Kentucky bluegrass or crabgrass is because it tastes sour and bitter.

In bluegrass, there’s a lot of joke-telling and a lot of banter between bandmates. It’s like improv or watching the ‘Carol Burnett Show.’

I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz.

The question is not how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?

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.

My parents were both writers – they would type their manuscripts sitting side by side on the veranda of our house near Watford – so I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be a bluegrass singer, an architect, a landscape gardener, or to do something with animals.

It doesn’t matter if you stick the name ‘bluegrass’ on it. I think people call things bluegrass that I wouldn’t necessarily call bluegrass, but what they’re calling country music today I’m not sure that I would call country music. But I love music and I try to encourage people.

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

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.

I guarantee you there’s a bunch of the twentysomethings that don’t know that, don’t know I play banjo and bluegrass.

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.

Coming from bluegrass background, I totally understand family harmonies.

I’ll listen to anything authentic whether it’s bluegrass or gospel or blues.

If you listen to all of my records, they all have a little part of me. So there’s a part of me that’s very bluegrass-y, and incredibly country, because I grew up on a farm in Missouri – I grew up singing country music. I started in bluegrass – but then there’s also so many other sides of me – really pop.

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 knew I loved playing bluegrass, so I’d end up down there on Sunday nights at the bluegrass jam.

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

No I don’t play bluegrass harmonica or anything like that. I don’t listen to country or bluegrass records.

There’s a roots nature to Appalachia – the origins of folk and bluegrass. I know guys there who are some of the best players I’ve ever heard but are playing on their porch tonight because they’ve never chased success. There’s simplicity to how they live and what they care about.

A lot of great bluegrass comes out of Kentucky. There’s a lot of great music, like the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. There’s a lot of bluegrass intertwined with country music.

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.

I was like, ‘Man, bluegrass – that’s like Roy Clark playing banjo on ‘Hee Haw.’ I’m a huge ‘Hee Haw’ fan. But I didn’t know about bluegrass. It seemed like old people’s music.

Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It’s a 12-bar form that’s played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that’s been used by rock n’ roll. It’s related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.

In my 30s, I became more open to music other than country or bluegrass.

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