“The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes…but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies”

The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.

I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village.

He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.

The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind.

My life has been devoted to opposing that tendency.

That the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.

And the thing that I always tried to do with important singers when I met them was to sit down and record everything they knew, give them a first real run-through of their art.

People were saying that Southern folk song was dead.

We now have cultural machines so powerful that one singer can reach everybody in the world, and make all the other singers feel inferior because they’re not like him.

Crushing the life out of all the other human possibilities.

Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space.

Folk Music is the map of singing.

Have you finished your column for tomorrow’s headline?” it was vee. She came up beside me, jotting notes on the notepad she carried everywhere. “i’m thinking of writing mine on the injustice of seating charts. I got paired with a girl who said she just finished lice treatment this morning.

I’m always a little leery about doing shows where I’m not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes.

After that, I made the decision to headline no matter what, even if I was playing to seven people. I wanted people to be there to see me.

Defense usually doesn’t make many headlines, but it goes a long way towards winning baseball games. There are a number of ways to make an impact during the course of a game, and playing solid, sound defense is one of them.