Folk Roots Quotes

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.

I think country music is popular - has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it's simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.

One thing we have to remember as songwriters is that we have to consider that country music is the country's music. That doesn't mean that everybody's rural.

I was never into the Bluegrass, Bill Monroe and stuff like that.

I came from a strong jazz/ singer-songwriter/folk influence, but in L.A., I learned how to have a balance between all these genres and R&B music and hip-hop, mixing them all together.

I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can't get away from completely.

Early on, before rock 'n' roll, I listened to big band music - anything that came over the radio - and music played by bands in hotels that our parents could dance to. We had a big radio that looked like a jukebox, with a record player on the top. The radio/record player played 78rpm records. When we moved to that house, there was a record on there, with a red label. It was Bill Monroe, or maybe it was the Stanley Brothers. I'd never heard anything like that before. Ever. And it moved me away from all the conventional music that I was hearing.

I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.

My music doesn't really sound like punk music, it's acoustic. And it doesn't really sound like folk music 'cause I'm thrashing too hard and emoting a little too much for the sort of introspective, respectful, sort-of folk genre thing. I'm really into punk and folk as music that comes out of communities and is very genuine and very immediate and not commercial.

I think what makes the Byrds stand up all these years is the basis in folk music. Folk music, being a timeless art form, is the foundation of the Byrds. We were all from a folk background. We considered ourselves folk singers even when we strapped on electric instruments and dabbled in different things.

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.