Banjo Music Quotes & Sayings

There are a lot of chapters to the banjo's history. Part of it are the roots in Africa, where it's a more primitive instrument. Then it comes to the United States where it morphs into the slave music that they created here, which was very African in origin. — Bela Fleck

I just loved the guitar when it came along. I loved it. The banjo was something I really liked, but when the guitar came along, to me that was my first love in music. — Doc Watson

When you want genuine music
music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,
when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo! — Mark Twain

I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear. — Pete Seeger

I'm into old-time music; I'm not very interested in modern, popular music at all. And if I'm really into some particular old-time musician, some fiddler or banjo player, I'm always dying of curiosity to see what they look like. So there's some connection between visual images and music. — Robert Crumb

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't. — Mark Twain

I didn't grow up on the porch of a cabin looking out over the 90 acres that the mule was plowing with Paw-Paw playing the banjo. But I was always interested in folk music. — Ketch Secor

The major labels, they roll with whatever is making money. I don't know if R&B turned into making banjo music and it sounded like blue grass, they'll buy it if it's selling. — Warryn Campbell

Speaking more generally about what attracted him to bluegrass banjo, he said it was 'just the sound of the instrument, and then the fire, you know; the speed and all that. I was attracted by the intensity of it, really. And I was drawn to that incredible clarity-- when something is going along real fast and every note is absolutely clear. That, to me, was really amazing-- the Earl Scruggs instrumentals...' But Garcia refused to commit himself to just one style of music. Though bluegrass became his overriding obsession for about two years, he still dabbled in folk, old-timey and blues whenever the opportunity arose and there were players around. — Blair Jackson

My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music. — Sam Shepard

The artistic side of our family was very important because one person encourages the other. It was a vey enlightening place to be as a kid because of all the music and dancing, and my dad played banjo; my sisters played piano and sang. — Dave Davies

'A guitar would work.' But then again so would a flute. A horn. A banjo. A tambourine. A trombone. The drums. When you're mixing music and love, there really is no bad combination." -Elvis Ruby — Nan Marino

Well I started out on guitar, so it is still the mainstay of my music. But I have recently been working very hard on my piano, and it is coming along to the point where it is taking more of the spotlight. It has been my plan to be able to make music well into my old age, and sitting down seems like a good idea. Also, I don't have to carry the piano on the road. I haven't been playing the banjo much of late because of the difficulties of travelling with so much gear. But maybe I'll bring it to Japan. It adds a different color to the musical palette. — Livingston Taylor

My family making music was like a folk background, really: banging on tabletops, playing banjo and all kinds of things. — Dave Davies

I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes. — Jonny Greenwood

George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it, but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel strong enough to stand it. George thought the music might do him good - said music often soothed the nerves and took away a headache; and he twanged two or three notes, just to show Harris what it was like.
Harris said he would rather have the headache. — Jerome K. Jerome

When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar. — Michael Storm

John Fahey, thought during his lifetime to be possibly more than a little crazy, was the author of some thirty albums of gnomically introverted droning guitar instrumentals, which I listened to heavily in my teens and twenties; I even produced an hour or so of banjo music in an imitative John Fahey style. — Madison Smartt Bell

I just naturally started to play music. My whole family played-my daddy played, my mother played. My daddy played bass, my cousin played banjo, guitar and mandolin. We played at root beer stands, like the .Drive-ins they have now, making $2.50 a night, and we had a cigar box for the kitty that we passed around, sometimes making fifty or sixty dollars a night. Of course we didn't get none of it, we kids. — T-Bone Walker

My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it keeps me off the streets. It has been a love of mine since I was 17 maybe. — Brendan Gleeson

I wrote a post about wanting to buy a banjo - a $300 banjo, which is a lot of money, and I don't play instruments; I don't know anything about music. I like music, and I like banjos, and I think I probably heard Steve Martin playing, and I said, 'I could do that.' And I said to my husband, I said, 'Ben, can I buy a banjo?' And he's like, 'No.' — Mena Grabowski Trott

When I was very young my mother sang to me at bedtime and my dad would often play the banjo or fiddle in the evening. I knew music was important and central to everything, most particularly it had a powerful healing value and created a sense of peace and security. This stood out to me as I always felt the world was precarious and dangerous, and music supplied those moments of real peace and safety. — Rory Block

In the United States, many people said you can't have folk music in the United States because you don't have any peasant class. But the funny thing was, there were literally thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who loved old time fiddling, ballads, banjo tunes, blues played on the guitar, spirituals and gospel hymns. These songs and music didn't fit into any neat category of art music nor popular music nor jazz. So gradually they said well let's call it folk music. — Pete Seeger

I didn't realize until I was older what a huge music fan my daddy really was, and actually that my grandma played banjo at one time, and I didn't even know that until a year or two ago. — Alan Jackson

He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo. — Pete Seeger

My daughter Meredith Moon from my second wife has a band that does Appalachian music, with five-strong banjo, clawhammer style. I may have to direct her somewhere. Meredith was my middle name. I would have to direct her because I am always directing something. She's in the musician's union and she is only 21. Your kids surprise you. — Gordon Lightfoot