Madison Smartt Bell Quotes

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.

I want you to hear a new version of Dueling Banjos. Anyone else is welcome.

In many ways I'm an experimental and new music composer that comes from a rural tradition rather than an urban one.

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

My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.

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

New Age is a very small box. It was a term that was brought in by the music industry to classify music that is neither jazz, classical, pop or rock. They didn't know what to call it or what to do with it. So they threw it all together under this one name.

My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.

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

I mean, there's times to rock and roll, and I love that too. But I think my first love is acoustic music.

Mumford & Sons' music appeals to a lot of America. I'm really proud of them.

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

Webern was a kind of 'Kamchatka of music,' an unknown country of music. That's true; for me and people of my generation, he was a radical - you couldn't be more radical than he was.

The first musical sound I ever heard was from a banjo. My father played, and I was an infant in a crib, and something just stayed with me from those early days.

We're all big fans of bluegrass.

I like Philip Glass. I think he's made some really great contributions to his field. I love his style of playing - it's very loop-style.

My first memory of guitar was seeing my father play one.

The banjo is my chosen instrument - it's what I write my music on.

I challenged myself to carry on the style of guitar that my grandmother did: the Carter scratch.

Coming from bluegrass background, I totally understand family harmonies.

I wood-shedded for a year to play Grandma's simple stuff. It's not that simple, and I don't use picks the way she does. But I played them as authentically as I could, with the flat-picking.

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

When we made the first album, it was meant to be a snapshot of Mumford & Sons in 2009.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don't think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

I am an old-school guitar player. I'm not an '80s-'90s sort of shredder who plays a million notes a minute. I am way more '60s-'70s kind of style, and I write very '60s-'70s.