The bluegrass community... can be very strict. I didn't know if I'd be welcomed into the bluegrass community or not, but I think they judge you very fairly... I felt really welcome.
The music has to come from bluegrass first. We always said back in the 70s that if you want to play newgrass you have to go through the school of bluegrass. You know, maybe Jack Black can make a movie now called School of Bluegrass . That would be cool.
Bluegrass has a very, very strict musical form. Once you start to dilute it, it disappears.
You may not hear much bluegrass on the surface of my music, but I feel the emotion I put in a song comes from bluegrass. Bluegrass taught me to interpret a song, not just sing it.
It doesn't matter if you stick the name 'bluegrass' on it. I think people call things bluegrass that I wouldn't necessarily call bluegrass, but what they're calling country music today I'm not sure that I would call country music. But I love music and I try to encourage people.
I have no doubt that most people who listen to Alison Krauss and say they like bluegrass have never heard real bluegrass played in the traditional manner, and probably don't even know who Bill Monroe is.
No I don't play bluegrass harmonica or anything like that. I don't listen to country or bluegrass records.
I knew I loved playing bluegrass, so I'd end up down there on Sunday nights at the bluegrass jam.
If you listen to all of my records, they all have a little part of me. So there's a part of me that's very bluegrass-y, and incredibly country, because I grew up on a farm in Missouri - I grew up singing country music. I started in bluegrass - but then there's also so many other sides of me - really pop.
There was a band in San Diego, Bluegrass Etc, that played a weekly gig. My parents would take my brother and me every Saturday night for 7 or 8 years. Sean and I started taking lessons with them and they gave us a great foundation in bluegrass instrumentation. They were the lens through which I saw music for a very long time.
I don't really have a favorite bass player. I listen to a lot of bluegrass. But then again, I'm not a typical bluegrass bass player. I was really into the Grateful Dead, and I still am - I don't listen to them too much, but for me they are a big influence.
Shortly after I started in bluegrass, Ricky Skaggs and I got together and the bluegrass career just snowballed. Being 15 or 16 and making good money playing music was pretty attractive.
It's true that bluegrass is a virtuosic form and asks that of its performer. Old-time music is older rawer and purer. It's less stylized. We don't solo. Well sometimes we do, but it's different it has more to do with rock-and-roll than bluegrass does.
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.
The Broadway community is unlike any community in show business and it is unlike any community in the world. When you come into the Broadway community they open the door and they say "welcome". Not only do they do that, but when times are really tough and horrendous things have happened and really tragic things - the Broadway community shows up! And they say "how can we help?".
That's what I love about Nashville and the music community - seeing kids around acoustic music and bluegrass picking parties is the best.
I'm influenced by Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelly, Roland Kirk, John Coltrane, B.B. King, and then by bluegrass. But when I was 16, bluegrass wasn't cool. We was rock n' rollers then: Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis.