Folk Singer Quotes & Sayings

I thought you were a folk singer.'

'No, I just need a haircut. In point of fact, I can't tell one note from another.'

'That needn't prevent you from being a folk singer. — Charlotte MacLeod

I started out as a folk singer, and kinda got sidetracked playin' honky tonks and such, but I was always a working musician. I didn't want to be Townes Van Zandt or Guy Clark, but I wanted to play in front of their audiences, you know what I mean? — Ray Wylie Hubbard

It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs. — Barry McGuire

I don't really think of myself as a folk singer. — Ray Lamontagne

I'm not really a folk singer, but I love the music and there's certain lines that will get just stuck in my head, and they seem to be stuck there for a reason, and I start singing them. — Sam Amidon

In my early life, I was a professional folk singer. I used to sing on the national television and radio in Canada. Nobody knows that - but now I've said it, haven't I? I'm strictly a shower singer at the minute. — Mary Gordon

Yeah, I always listen to both classic and newer folk-influenced music. Singer-songwriter, alternative music. I also listen to more experimental dance music. — Brad Delson

I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir. — Kiesza

When I started out playing guitar and singing, I was about twelve, going on thirteen. The role models for me back then were the folk singers. They all had these high, really nice voices and ranges, like Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and then later, of course, Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt. I decided early on that I was going to learn how to write songs really, really well, because I didn't want to have to compete as a singer. I didn't feel that it was my strong point. — Lucinda Williams

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations. — Rufus Wainwright

I never saw myself as a folk singer. — Bob Dylan

Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them. — Brownie McGhee

Armed with a hammer and sickle, singer and folklorist A. L. Lloyd hit the nail on the head and cut to the quick on page one of his monumental study of folk song: 'The mother of folklore is poverty.'3 — Rob Young

Dave Van Ronk, for those who don't know him - probably most don't know - was a folk singer. He's kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up. — Ethan Coen

I've been watching a lot of Joni Mitchell YouTube clips and I can't believe her transformation from this folk singer in Canada. — Zooey Deschanel

Yes. My mother was and still is a Folk Singer. She was very involved in the political movements for Unions and Civil rights. She sang with Pete Seeger among others. My father was an Actor. — Vicki Sue Robinson

I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday. — Jeannette Walls

I took the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face from a folk singer called Bonnie Dobson. I knew her and she had a record with that track on it. — Gordon Lightfoot

I was just a folk singer. I cut my teeth on the streets, you know. — Cass McCombs

Pete Seeger is a modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured man. He's a good folk singer, if you can stand folk singing. And he's such an excellent banjo player that you almost don't wish you had a pair of wire cutters. — P. J. O'Rourke

A professional entertainer who allows himself to become known as a singer of folk songs is bound to have trouble with his conscience provided, of course, that he possesses one. As a performing artist, he will pride himself on timing and other techniques designed to keep the audience in his control [ ... ] his respect for genuine folklore reminds him that these changes, and these techniques, may give the audience a false picture of folk music. — Sam Hinton

I'm not a folk or jazz singer, more a hard-edged pop singer - with some rock, and song hooks. — Phoebe Snow

It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people — Woody Guthrie

If someone asked what kind of music I play, I wouldn't say I'm a folk singer; however, if folk music means music for the people, and playing music to entertain them and share different messages, then sure, I'd like to think that I'm part folk singer. — Langhorne Slim

My mom was a folk singer and Celtic harpist. My dad was in a barbershop quartet and my great grandma was an opera singer. As I grew up, I discovered pop music and Top 40 radio, but it was in the '90s, so music was very different then - it was really lyrical. — Skylar Grey

I'm not a folk-singer. I just sing a certain place. — Bob Dylan

Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer. — Sissy Spacek

I didn't have to be a pop singer with a certain look. When I started, there was really a revolution in natural artists with blues and folk artists crossing over; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to get started. — Bonnie Raitt

Now any person who plays an acoustic guitar standing up on stage with a microphone is a folk singer. Some grandmother with a baby in her arms singing a 500-year-old song, well, she's not a folk singer, she's not on stage with a guitar and a microphone. No, she's just an old grandmother singing an old song. The term "folk singer" has gotten warped. — Pete Seeger

I was a folk singer who became totally over the edge with country music. I found my voice and style working with Gram Parsons. I learned how to listen to George Jones records and the Louvin Brothers. — Emmylou Harris

There's room in the world for one historical folk-rock singer to make a decent living, and I happen to be it. — Al Stewart

I went to high school right outside Dallas, and (songwriter and performer) Michael Martin Murphey was a senior there when I was a sophomore or junior, really into folk and acoustic music. Larry Gross, who's the host of "Mountain Stage" on public radio, and B.W. Stevenson, also a musician, were there at the same time, too. Michael was a big inspiration
through him I discovered Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Jimmy Rogers. Then I ran into Jerry Jeff Walker there in Dallas back when he was just a folk singer. Those are my earliest influences. — Ray Wylie Hubbard

I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer. — Robert Wyatt

If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer. — Joan Baez

I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want. — Langhorne Slim

I was only a folk singer for about two years ... . By that time, it wasn't really folk music anymore. It was some new American phenomenon. Later, they called it singer/songwriters. Or art songs, which I liked best. Some people get nervous about that word. Art. They think it's a pretentious word from the giddyap. To me, ... the word art has never lost its vitality. — Joni Mitchell

I've always considered myself a folk singer, even though we strapped on Rickenbacker guitars and played pretty loud. — Roger McGuinn

I am back in London in a couple of days and looking forward to Sunday. Here is what we are doing. 1. Going to see my favourite mad transgender folk singer at the Roundhouse. 2. Then I am going to feed you tapas in a little place by Mornington Crescent. 3. Then we will go home in opposite directions and I will stare at my silent phone for weeks, wondering what happened. Or we will go for a dirty hump on Primrose Hill. Or maybe we will just have an awkward kiss/hug loaded with the promise of more next time. — Lucy Robinson

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a moody folk singer, sitting on stools and being very depressing. — Stephen Mangan

I'm called a folk singer, and I'm not too sure about that. I went about my life approaching music not from the point of view of a singer, but from the point of view of an actor. That's how I first started to sing. — Harry Belafonte

When I was in college, being a magician was not the classiest thing to be. It was like being a folk singer before Bob Dylan. — Doug Henning

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. — Loudon Wainwright III

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff. — Anthony Doerr

I'm a folk singer-songwriter. I am pretty poppy though. — Vance Joy

It's occurred to me I need to laugh at myself more, and that I don't need to be some sad folk singer all the time. I don't want to be the queen of pain. — Patty Griffin

I used to be a folk singer, but I was ... dreadful. I had a voice like a goose farting in the fog. And being a folk singer doesn't make you attractive to women. — Billy Connolly

It was darn nigh impossible for women in rock in the '70s. There wasn't a mold if you were a woman and you were in the entertainment in the '70s. You were probably a disco diva or a folk singer, or simply ornamental. Radio would play only one woman per hour. — Ann Wilson