Michael Storm Quotes

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.

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.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

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

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.

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

Well, I don't think it ever did, but in the early '60s I got interested in folk music.

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

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

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

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.

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

Folk music was out there. Clubs were springing up and they were hot with the college kids.

I came late to the genre of folk music.

I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.

I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice.

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

My family making music was like a folk background, really: banging on tabletops, playing banjo and all kinds of things.

Every demo I do has a mandolin or resonator on it - some element of the bluegrass or classic country world that I grew up listening to and that first drew me in. And then I always try to find somewhere for a bluesy guitar sound, because that's also what I love. Musically, I'm always finding my way home.

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.

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.

I always thought I was singing American folk music.

When I do listen to music, I'm more prone to listen to the people I've always listened to: George Jones, Otis Redding, Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris.

I was reared on folk music.