Ben Lovett Quotes

Country music has always been about as close to R&B as you can possibly get. We're storytellers.

I'm really taken with 'Calling Me Home' by Alice Gerrard.

Country music is the people's music. It just speaks about real life and about truth and it tells things how they really are.

I can remember back as far as age 8, performing with the Boston Folk Song Society. It was a Woody Guthrie song.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

I came late to the genre of folk music.

I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.

I love Lee Ann Womack and John Prine. That's kind of my ideal cross point. If I can sing it like Lee Ann would and say it like John would, then I feel like I've gotten somewhere.

To me, country music is like the blues, but it's something very hip and - I don't want to say commercial - but it's very worldly and good listening.

I always loved that old song 'Banks of the Ohio' - it was always such a man's song, so I've always wanted to record it.

I've been writing a lot more folky, country type stuff. One of the reasons I wanted to write in the first place was because of Darrell Scott.

I've grown up on American songwriters my whole life - listening to Paul Simon and Bob Dylan and people like John Prine - you know, classic, real songwriters. They've been the lion's share of what I've really focused on as a writer and as influences, too.

Country music has the great stories.

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

I don't know about folk music. I play guitar, so there's a feeling I make folk music.

I don't know anybody who doesn't hate being called alt.country. It just sounds like a website. I don't mind being called Americana, I don't mind being called country noir, or independent country is fine, but the words alt.country make me insane.

I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice.

I've always considered myself a folk singer, even though we strapped on Rickenbacker guitars and played pretty loud.

This is the bunch of songs I did first, and it's just the type of thing I do. I am a Carter Family girl, so the record is book-ended with Carter Family songs.

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

I'm a big Johnny Cash girl. And I love singers like Laura Marling and Joanna Newsom.

When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar.

When I think of folk music, I think of topical songs. And I don't write topical songs.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.