I am a man of constant sorrow. I've seen trouble all my days.

I guess the first time I played around Washington, D.C. was at a place called The Famous. That was the first place I played, I believe.

My father was a logger. He cut timber and hauled it out of the woods and had a sawmill. They sawed it into lumber. And, you know, the mines needed things they call timbers and collars and so forth, and they used collars on the railroad track that they put the rails on. And he - that was his occupation, just a sawmill man and a logger.

I've done it all. I'm thankful and proud of what I've accomplished in my life. I hope to keep doing it.

My first banjo? My mother's sister, my aunt, lived about a mile from where we did, and she raised some hogs. And she had - her - the hog - the mother - they called the mother a sow - of a hog. And she had some pigs. Well, the pigs were real pretty, and I was going to high school and I was taking agriculture in school. And I sort of got a notion that I'd like to do that, raise some hogs. And so my aunt had this old banjo, and my mother told me, said, which do you want, the pig or a banjo? And each one of them's $5 each. I said, I'll just take the banjo.

I don't see any harm in brining an instrument into the church itself.

I am a man of constant sorrow. I've seen trouble all my days.