Harry Dean Stanton Quotes

First I was a European-style player, then I was a downtown 'noise guy,' and now some people call me an Americana guy.

The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.

When I was in Boston, I was doing a lot of Americana stuff - I fell in love with Ray LaMontagne, Patty Griffin, and Neil Young.

I always loved LeAnn Rimes and especially Clint Black for his soulfulness. As I've gotten older, my influences have broadened - John Mayer, Michael Buble, Stevie Wonder, Keith Urban, Stevie Ray Vaughn, the Beatles - all of these artists have somehow been a part of my development as a songwriter.

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.

Dave Van Ronk is not an obscure figure. He's the biggest figure on an obscure scene, playing a kind of niche music that we knew and liked.

I remember having a lot of Josh White albums. Johnny Cash. Elvis. I loved the Coasters.

I'm a fan of music, some rock music. But I like many types of music. But I suppose a kind of longstanding love of specific bands would be Radiohead, Wilco, Neil Young, Tom Waits, REM.

I've grown up on Bob Dylan and all that, but there was a certain standard set up by people before 1955.

I love Willie Nelson's 'Phases And Stages'; there's so many songs from The Band and Bob Dylan that have gotten me through hard times, like 'Tears Of Rage.' I love Karen Dalton's 'In My Own Time' and Skip James.

When you label something a singer-songwriter record, you cover many genres.

My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.

I never get tired of exploring Americana or country music, and I always have a little bit of a crooner in me that never seems to go away.

The native music of North America, the original-roots music of this country, is also the underworld music of this country.

People like Beck and Shawn Colvin are some of the people I listen to lately.

There are always generic terms like 'Americana', but there are no boundaries as to where it can go.

I really get that some people like the roots-rock, storytelling thing that I was doing, and I'm proud of that.

When I was in Utah there, first learning the kind of music I love, my favorite singer was T. Texas Tyler. So my friend, Norman Ritchie, the traveling teenage sage, started calling me U. Utah Phillips.

And now, I still really don't care that much but now I have music playing all the time at home, which is a first for me. Whatever. Everything from Ani DiFranco to Dave Matthews to Jack Johnson and Norah Jones.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

If I were to categorize what I sing, I have many different influences, and a lot of them are from back in time.

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

Americana Music is about all sorts of different music. It's very free and open: a world where people just like authentic music.

I have quite an eclectic taste in music. I like Angus & Julia Stone; they are an Australian brother/sister duo. I like Adele. She is phenomenal.