Top 134 Bluegrass Quotes & Sayings

I'll listen to anything authentic whether it's bluegrass or gospel or blues.

Well, Peter Rowan and I had plans to form a band when he left Bill Monroe. I always thought it was going to be a bluegrass band, but I guess when Peter left Bill Monroe he had had enough of bluegrass. He had written some songs and of course the Beatles were a big influence back then. So, we decided to something different and it ended up being that.

Listening is like running down a mountain on a switchback trail, the sound of surprise generating its own momentum. There’s a punk glee inside the bluegrass craft–and a punk vehemence inside the bluegrass smile.

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

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.

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

I was four days old when I went to my first bluegrass festival.

I was always into bluegrass as a kid. Basically, I like music that has a basic simple structure and that has a lot of emotion and feel. Bluegrass and other old time music fits the bill, as well as what became punk - they both kind of have a similar framework.

It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians

It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians.

I grew up playing bluegrass as a youngster, and I'm happy that I did.

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.

I went to Appalachian State University, which was very bluegrass- and folk-oriented.

Mike Compton knows more about Bill Monroe style mandolin than the Father of Bluegrass himself.

The grand old lady of bluegrass? Well, wouldn't that be a wonderful title to have? I hope I do enough to earn it some day

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.

I'm one of the people who believe the great lines come from either Western or bluegrass music.

I hope you came out to hear some bluegrass music. If you didn't, we're both in the wrong place.

I laid my country music aside for quite a while... because bluegrass audiences didn't care to hear it. But it just kept haunting me.

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.

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

Bluegrass has a very, very strict musical form. Once you start to dilute it, it disappears.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Coming from bluegrass background, I totally understand family harmonies.

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.

In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.

I learned to love bluegrass, but my first love stayed hard country.

I'm just trying to unite the western crowd and the bluegrass crowd a little more. ... I get to do that again on my new album, Tall Grass and Cool Water.... This is the first time I've had every song on an album be a Bluegrass and Cowboy Song at the same time.

We're all big fans of bluegrass.

In my 30s, I became more open to music other than country or bluegrass.

We came out of bluegrass, so we could play.

Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.

My dad's a photographer, and my sister is a writer and a poet. My little brother is a mandolin player - he's a bluegrass musician. It's always been a part of the family.

When I was playing bluegrass, I was living down in West Hollywood - starving.

I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals.

If you looked at my iPod, you would get a trip out of all the different music, from the real heavy metal to bluegrass to classical.

What makes one type of music classical and one bluegrass and one folk - these things aren't what's important.

I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore.

I guarantee you there's a bunch of the twentysomethings that don't know that, don't know I play banjo and bluegrass.

I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.

I knew I loved playing bluegrass, so I'd end up down there on Sunday nights at the bluegrass jam.

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.

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.

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background.

It was so much fun playing simple American bluegrass. I got to meet Doc Watson.

I always loved country gospel from back when I was a teenager in high school and started listening to bluegrass quite a lot.

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.

I think Earl Scruggs playing propelled bluegrass and Bill Monroe's music to the level that - where we're all still talking about it.

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

I've always wanted to make a bluegrass album.

We have to make a living and you can't do that playing bluegrass.

I started at such a young age learning every style of music, the country and the bluegrass and the western swing and the rock - everything.

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.

People like bluegrass. It's had a following amongst a lot of hip and young people. A lot of college kids like bluegrass.

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.

The question is not how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?

The grand old lady of bluegrass? Well, wouldn't that be a wonderful title to have? I hope I do enough to earn it some day.