Folk Songs – Quotes

There are no bridges

There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them. Eugene Chadbourne

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs … on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, ‘crying into the mouth organ’. I do … Read more

My dad took me

My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what its like. I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing Memory. I was terrible. Terrible. … Read more

People thought me a

People thought me a bit strange at first; a blond haired, blue-eyed Norwegian who sang Mexican folk songs, but I used it to my advantage and got a job. And so the music became my ticket to education. David Soul

Well, at first the

Well, at first the band were simply called Horsepower, but a lot of people thought that was something to do with heroin. That really pissed me off, so I decided to put something in front of it to distract them. “I got ’16’ from a traditional American folk song, where a man is singing about … Read more

My mum’s family would

My mum’s family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me. Dan Auerbach

The whole trouble with

The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. Most Russian music, indeed, consists in ringing changes on this device, skilfully disguised though the fact may be. Constant Lambert

In a way it’s

In a way it’s the emotional feeling that you get in a good rock song or folk song, there’s just nothing that rivals that. Bryce Dessner

Songwriters I’ve always been

Songwriters I’ve always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing. …I’ve always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I’ve gone on, it’s gotten a little more … Read more

Pat Benatar might need

Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off. Bonnie Raitt