Donald McCaig Quotes

In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.

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

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.

'Beneath the Piano' by The Devil Makes Three somehow reminds me of an old Johnny Cash song. The song is a lot of fun and tells a story.

I think I'm the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.

Bob Dylan and John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, these are soul guys. Bruce Springsteen might not sing like Otis Redding, but he sings with white soul. He's singing and he's writing songs from the bottom of his gut.

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.

The thing that I took away as an early fan from Bob Dylan was the storytelling aspects. He can tell some wicked stories.

The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.

My musical heroes are people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie who wrote and sang real songs for real people; for everyone, old, young, and in between.

I've had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that's just what I've always liked - people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.

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 think I'm different from a lot of singer-songwriters because some of my favorite singer-songwriters told stories. Like John Prine.

I've been delivering these little homilies since 1980 - that's 37 years - and altogether, NPR statisticians tell me, my bloviation total is 1,656 commentaries - and I trust you've hung onto every word.

I listen to the Avett Brothers all the time. I find their music interesting and introspective.

The music that I first fell in love with was American music, really. Nothing against British acts - I love them and will forever - but on the whole, it was the art of American storytelling in the kind of folk and blues lyrics that, if you scratch a little bit, there's a heartbreaking story there.

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.

No one wants to hear me doing my best Garrison Keillor... I think that he's inimitable; he's one in a billion.

When I discovered Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I could explore the records that inspired me on a different level and that led me to Joni Mitchell, who is maybe my favorite of all time, and Warren Zevon. Those artists that wrote the lyrics that you try for.

I like listening to Garrison Keillor's 'The Writer's Almanac' with my daughter.

For 'The Lobster Kings,' I listened to a lot of Johnny Cash. And it makes its way into the book.

Any nobody from the folk blues world could avoid being influenced by Woody Guthrie, who is actually of Scottish-Irish ancestry.

Growing up, I listened to a lot of American singer/songwriters, so a lot of Tom Waits, Paul Simon - also Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. And bands like Vampire Weekend.