We never had a girl in the band. Why? Certainly there's some rippin' female players in our kind of music. We have no objection to it. It'd be wonderful.

I think country music is a champion of women. That stuff coming out of Nashville now wants to see a woman looking good in the kitchen whipping up some biscuits.

It's true that bluegrass is a virtuosic form and asks that of its performer. Old-time music is older rawer and purer. It's less stylized. We don't solo. Well sometimes we do, but it's different it has more to do with rock-and-roll than bluegrass does.

It's not very long ago that we were all singing country music. And country music is equally black as it is white and that's important to recognize.

I guess it's a bit like not claiming your brother at school. This kind of disowning of the thing that you're most like. You want to be something cool, like Michael Jackson say, with a boom box over your shoulder and wearing leather. But you know deep down you're just a hayseed.

It seems like everyone's listening to fiddles and banjos.

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.