Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is 'traditional plus.'
The first music I remember hearing was the traditional songs of Kentucky - things like 'Roll Along Kentucky Moon.'
I like for it to be mountain music or old-time country music or traditional bluegrass. Either one will fit me. It's traditional, basically.
This is the bunch of songs I did first, and it's just the type of thing I do. I am a Carter Family girl, so the record is book-ended with Carter Family songs.
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.
That was the special thing about the Carolina Chocolate Drops. We didn't want to do music full-time. We weren't looking to get rich, which is good, because we didn't. But we went further than we thought we would go. We started that band to celebrate Joe Thompson and the black string band music. That's not really a recipe for commercial success.
I base my roots and history in old blues, old country and old bluegrass, and I like rock 'n' roll, and somehow it all came together, and that is what I am playing now.
Charlie Patton, who was born in 1891, recorded some of the very first blues. In 'Pony Blues' and 'Peavine Blues,' he manages to pile dense layers of rhythms one upon the other.
I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on.
Early Bluegrass is my favorite kind of music, not to many people know that.
I was about 14, and I got hooked on the music of the Stanley Brothers.
There's nothing purer than Janette Carter with an autoharp.
We're not here as a black band playing white string band music. You know, we play stuff in the Appalachians, we play stuff in the white community, but we really highlight the black community's music.
