You know, for most of its life bluegrass has had this stigma of being all straw hats and hay bales and not necessarily the most sophisticated form of music. Yet you can't help responding to its honesty. It's music that finds its way deep into your soul because it's strings vibrating against wood and nothing else.

I don't get recognised in London or at home either - very seldom anyway. Either that or I look so crazy no one wants to come up to me.

My parents made us do everything, try everything.

I still think of myself as from Illinois.

I'm much better at fixing or changing a melody to suit me than I would a lyric. But for me, everything is lyric. It has to be true for me to say it.

Whenever I've chosen a song because it's clever, it's always turned out to be a mistake.

The grand old lady of bluegrass? Well, wouldn't that be a wonderful title to have? I hope I do enough to earn it some day