I was raised fundamentalist Christian, and now I'm not that. It was not an act of rebellion or anything. For me, it was about being in a line of work where I was meeting so many different people and feeling like they all had legitimate points of view that I needed to consider and occasionally these were at odds with ideas that I was raised with.
Music should never be a dictatorship. It should be a symbiotic relationship between the musician and the audience.
You need to put yourself in the way of the music that stood the test of time. You're doing yourself an incredible disservice not be interested in the width and breadth of it.
When they invented the mandolin, it was as if they were trying to come up with the least efficient means of extracting noise from a piece of wood.
Generally speaking, I think one has to take reviews with a grain of salt, unless you know who the person is and what their qualifications are.
Hats off to musicians who just want a pure escape. I have a lot of fondness for pure escapism. I don't feel like it's irresponsible, I think sometimes you really need to take a breather.
I don't feel that things need make their appeal exclusively to one demographic. I don't feel that there is truly great art that only appeals to people in a certain age range.
The more you look at great art of any kind, you'll see that there's this thread running through all of it.
I certainly love the bluegrass ensemble, I think it's a powerful tool, but I don't think it's more than a tool.
My musical output has been consistently acoustic, but my taste has not. I love everything. As long as it's good, I'm in.
In my mind, there's this one 'super genre,' which is the only genre that matters, and that's the super genre of good music.
Bill Monroe is not singing about life in America. He's singing about life in Kentucky and Tennessee. And yet it's had this tremendous impact, not just in America but in the world. Why is Bill Monroe's hyper-regional music so universal? We can be so different and yet still share a tremendous amount.
The goal of serious musicians is to play outside of yourself. That's most likely with people who suggest things that are outside your musical experience.
The fact that I'm a fifth of Punch Brothers... that's lucky for me because I feel like I get to operate in the context of one of the great string bands. There's just not another string band I would rather be in, and i'm just compelled to make music for and with string bands. It's what I know, and it's kind of like who I am.
The name 'Clara' is significant in my life. When I was an adolescent and started thinking about my place in the world as an adult and growing up, I knew I would have an eventually new outlook on things and eventually meet someone and have a kid. In my mind, I was like, 'If I have a daughter, I want to name her Clara.'
No one wants to hear me doing my best Garrison Keillor... I think that he's inimitable; he's one in a billion.