Bill Monroe Quotes

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

I'll tell you, my dad played and sang, and it didn't take me long to figure out that playing a guitar was a whole lot better than getting ahold of a hoe handle or chopping cotton, man.

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

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

I was introduced to country music around a campfire on a farm.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

Picking a guitar was a lot easier than picking cotton.

We're all big fans of bluegrass.

I sing 'Blue Moon of Kentucky.' It's a country song. It's one of my favorites to sing.

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

When I was 12 years old I discovered Bill Monroe and my dad got me a mandolin.

I still play that guitar. It's a Martin D-18 with a clear pick guard. I've played that guitar on and off my TV shows for nearly 50 years.

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

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.

'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.

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

I sing a bit and play guitar.

I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.

I have about 50 guitars around the house. I can't take more than a few steps without finding one to pick up.

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.

Folk music is where I come from originally. The very first thing that introduced me to playing guitars at all was skiffle - my cousin had been in London the summer that skiffle was big.

I like all kinds of music. I listen to Abigail Washburn, the Punch Brothers, and Marc Johnson, the great clawhammer player. I also listen a lot to Sirius Radio, there's a lot of bluegrass there.

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.

My first really good guitar was a Gibson J-45.

I came late to the genre of folk music.