My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music. I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar.
When Merle and I started out we called our music 'traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.
Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is 'traditional plus.'
Everything goes in cycles in the music industry.
Any club is important. All Latin music movements are born in clubs. There is no better research than going to a club. If your music works, it will bounce up.
You'd go in, read the script once for timing and then you would sit around and play games. The sound effects people would come in and we would do a dress rehearsal so they could get the effects and the music cues in place. Then you would wait until y...
I think actors are at the mercy of the opportunities presented to them. So you kind of have to wait for them to choose you. My music is insular - I can choose that.
It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music.
Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues.
I'll never quit playing country music, or at least acknowledging it, always, as the cornerstone of what I am.
I played music and sang from my earliest memories. The first pictures of me show me wandering around with a guitar that was larger than I was, and it became almost second nature to me.
Music's the one thing I try not to analyze. I don't want to destroy the magic that has always been there for me.
My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.
But that is a valid, continuing service that that music - which is, in some cases, 80 or 90 years old - is rendering. And proving its own timelessness.
Yes, but I view Frank's music as fully composed. In other words, the arrangements can work for any idiom such as a rock band or an orchestra. Frank was a brilliant arranger and could make his music work in any context. He proved that tour after tour ...
There are so many things that are misunderstood or not recognized about my father's music because they've been filtered by people who work for magazines like Rolling Stone.
The music that is played on the radio all the time or written about in magazines has nothing to do with musicianship.
I really want younger audience members to see kids in their early 20's playing Frank's music and to be inspired to take things to a higher level themselves.
I feel that through my father's music I've found my own voice in my own playing.
The stage is close to being in the middle of the hall, so that the performers are surrounded by the listeners. I feel that we are all experiencing the music together.
The sheer force of the music calls for a wild audience reaction.
