Because music gets you high, so it makes sense to sing about what else gets you high.

Because music gets you high, so it makes sense to sing about what else gets you high.

I heard Pete Seeger records when I was a kid. I saw Bob Dylan when I was about 12. The first song I ever learned to play was a song by Phil Ochs.

We weren't straight-A students. We didn't start playing until we were teenagers, and we started playing rock and roll and punk rock - power chords - before we ever thought we would play folk music. So virtuosity was just never in my reach.

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.