Ry Cooder Quotes

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

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

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 love that there's this tradition of being able to discuss the heaviest topics and the gnarliest stuff that goes down in people's lives in traditional Southern American music.

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.

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

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

Folk Music Has Always Contained a Concern for the Human Condition.

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 always thought I was singing American folk music.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

I've always wanted to make a bluegrass album.

I was reared on folk music.

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 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 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've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.

I would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man.

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

I'm no hillbilly singer.

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.

To sing like a hillbilly, you had to have lived like a hillbilly. You had to have smelt a lot of mule manure.