Robert Plant Quotes

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

I love Muddy Waters and Nina Simone. I also watched 'The Blues Brothers' movie over and over.

I was into playing American music, especially the blues.

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.

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.

Leadbelly's guitar is in the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.

I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.

I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from southern Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains - I love that stuff. It's like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.

I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.

I've always loved the blues, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin, Hendrix.

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.

A lot of my friends, they think I grew up to rock and roll, but I didn't. I grew up to Hank Williams, Jimmy Reid, Howlin' Wolf, listening to a race record, blues.

Basically, I like anything with guts - Lead Belly, Bill Big Broonzy, Johnny Winter, the Stones.

After my early days of being a passionate young Elvis fan, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. I got interested in Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got turned on to the blues. I realized how important it was to our music in England at the time. Everyone was into the blues. Then you start looking at the different kinds of blues, and you follow the journey backwards from Chicago to earlier times back down to the Delta to the Memphis Blues.

The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.

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 parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.

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

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.

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

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.

Patty Griffin is iconic, and there's no other word to really describe her. She is iconic for a lot of people - not only for me but for a lot of fans. Her voice is one of a kind, and she's such an important figure in the American music scene.

Country music is completely punk-rock. It's the original punk-rock.

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.

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