Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk h...
Artists are taught to be humble about their impact, especially in folk music. It's so ingrained that I have a hard time even thinking I had any impact other than what a normal hit song would have.
I don't really think of myself as a folk singer.
Biting and scratching is Scots folk's wooing.
I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.
Poor folk's wisdom counts very little.
Because that world's gone. The world where people walked around whistling that music. All the madrigal singers in the world can't make that other one real again. It's like dinosaurs. We can put them back together perfectly, bone for bone, but we don'...
I never saw myself as a folk singer.
I'm not so sure reading Scripture will keep us from having to face trouble as much as it will focus our attention on our Help in those times. The Bible's full of stories about good folks with troubles. Good folks. God-fearin' folks.
I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk ro...
Folk music usually has an emphasis on the lyrics and melody. And those lyrics are usually relevant in some way. And it's populist in scope, which is also true of Bad Religion. So it's more meant to draw some parallels between the two. And I think eve...
People don't listen to one radio station. On iTunes you can mix different worlds and bring country and pop and folk and live music together with a mass audience. I could have sung 'Easy' in a country way but I just sang it how I sing. I think it's a ...
Fools are like other folks as long as they are silent.
So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing. But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they wer...
This is a book for every fiddler who has realized halfway through playing an ancient Scottish air that the Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated" is what folk music is really all about, and gone straight into it.
I live in Nashville, and I don't know how many people there would call me country. I really started in punk and anti-folk, but one of the reasons I originally gravitated towards country music is because most of those songs only use three chords. That...
I picked up the guitar very late, in a very pagan way - I didn't know how to play, but I knew I had to. I drew and I had a diary, but it wasn't enough; I needed to express more. As soon as I learned two notes, I started to tell a story, which is why,...
I've always loved the songs of the sea. I was first introduced to them back in 1957, at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I used to go to Pete Seeger concerts, and he would do songs like 'Ruben Ranzo' and talk about how the sailors sang songs to do ...
If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don't get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten sq...
I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em.
Roland Turner: Folk singer with a cat. You queer?
