Steve Martin Quotes

The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.

I wasn't really an old-time breakdown fiddler.

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

The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as 'What's that?' There's something very compelling about it to certain people; that's the way I was; that's the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.

There's nothing purer than Janette Carter with an autoharp.

I didn't actually start playing the banjo until I was in high school.

The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.

Now I know what a dulcimer is supposed to sound like.

I was about 16 years old years when my father took me to a square dance festival in North Carolina. For the first time in my life, I found there was music in my country that you never heard on the radio, and you didn't hear on the juke boxes, and in theaters. I fell in love with it, especially the long-necked banjos.

Give me a mandolin and I'll play you rock 'n' roll.

I first heard the banjo on the Beverly Hillbillies, and from then on I was banjo-conscious. But I didn't actually get one until my grandfather gave me one, almost by mistake. He knew I was playing a little bit of guitar. He saw a banjo at a flea market and bought it. I took it home with me and just never put it down. I was fifteen.

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.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

I've always wanted to make a bluegrass album.

I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition.

A lot of great bluegrass comes out of Kentucky. There's a lot of great music, like the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. There's a lot of bluegrass intertwined with country music.

The first time I read something, I have this special feeling of being fully engaged with it. It's fresh to the audience because it's fresh to me. It's a little mystical, but I really believe that.

No, but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully.

Early Bluegrass is my favorite kind of music, not to many people know that.

Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is 'traditional plus.'

Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.

A lot of people don't realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

I was like, 'Man, bluegrass - that's like Roy Clark playing banjo on 'Hee Haw.' I'm a huge 'Hee Haw' fan. But I didn't know about bluegrass. It seemed like old people's music.

There are a whole lot of Carter Family songs.

I play a replica of a banjo from the 1950s. It was the first commercial-style banjo in the United States so it's the first one that white people played.