“Being from New York, I wonder why am I inspired by bluegrass and Earl Scruggs? But when I look at the whole history of the banjo, I feel really good about it, including the Earl Scruggs part.”

When I play my own music, or when I play new music, there’s much more stress and intensity of thinking about how I’m going to make it work!

Sometimes you can fix something that went wrong with what you do next and make it better than it would have been if it hadn’t gone wrong, as an improviser, and I do know how to do that.

Sometimes you can fix something that went wrong with what you do next and make it better than it would have been if it hadn’t gone wrong, as an improviser, and I do know how to do that.

I don’t know enough about hip-hop, though I’ve heard some great hip-hop. I just did a thing with Qwest Love – we did a performance together in Memphis at the Folk Alliance Festival, and we had a great jam and a conversation.

It doesn’t have to be happy music to be inspiring.

I doubt anybody would have pushed me [on the music]. When I was at Sony nobody ever gave me any creative suggestions on the music.

I think I’m getting better at being verbal. I used to have a lot of problems with it. I had my own little demons that I was fighting, and I used the banjo as an escape.

I think the musical evolution I’ve gone through has come from all the work with the material.

There is a tendency to want to isolate a little bit, from people that might look at me from a fan position, because it’s hard to be a real person around them, and I really want that when I’m not out on tour and in that sort of public eye.

And then Earl Scruggs comes along and transforms the banjo into a virtuosic modern instrument. For the first time, the Southern banjo style becomes the identity of the banjo, and everything from before is wiped off of people’s consciousness by the power of that explosion.

He knew I was playing a little bit of guitar. He saw a banjo at a flea market and bought it. I took it home with me and just never put it down. I was fifteen.

My most powerful memory was hearing Earl Scruggs on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ as a 5 or 6 year old. That sound just blew me away, shook my head up.

I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.

There’s a lot of hip-hop that would be great with a banjo in it. It would just groove like crazy, and I hope I get to be one of the guys who does that, because it’s coming. It’s coming.

Everybody should have a documentary made about themselves. It’s amazing what you see and what you learn.

Instead she inspired people to listen and then act, and to me thats the hallmark of a true leader.

That’s more the kind of thing that get us inspired.

In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way.

I’m inspired by the work of those (and sometimes even the people themselves) who strive to inspire.

I’m very inspired by past music.

The work on weekdays and the rest on the seventh day are correlated. The Sabbath is the inspirer, the other days the inspired.

Art when inspired with love leads to higher realms, and that art will open for you the inner life.

A female’s career as an actor is very different from a male’s career as an actor. That’s just the way it is. So, I’m fascinated by really strong male careers that have inspired me, and also really incredible male roles.