My granddad was an evangelist, and my grandma, she was as tough as nails. She watched 'American Bandstand' every day when she was in her 80s, 90s. She loved rock music. I never had anyone in my family that was anti-rock n' roll.
Dick Clark's 'American Bandstand' spread the gospel of American pop music and teenage style that transcended the regional boundaries of our country and united a youth culture that eventually spread its message throughout the entire world.
The whole American pop culture started in Philadelphia with 'American Bandstand' and the music that came out of that city.
My early childhood memories center around this typical American country store and life in a small American town, including 4th of July celebrations marked by fireworks and patriotic music played from a pavilion bandstand.
Some of the wise boys who say my music is loud, blatant and that's all should see the faces of the kids who have driven a hundred miles through the snow to see the band... to stand in front of the bandstand in an ecstasy all their own.
Everybody's all up on the EDM bandwagon now, because it's, like, another viable conduit for traditional pop music to ride for a bit so they can get out of their little stagnant pool and make a dance hit.
Music is designed to be listened to, so it's calling for attention all the time, syphoning off our very limited auditory bandwidth and elbowing aside our ability to listen to the voice in our head we need when we're doing mental work.
I'm kind of like a folk singer mixed with soul, but I feel like if you really are a lover of hip-hop music, make the beat banging as possible and then put the message in so that people get the honey with the medicine.
There's no magic for getting into the groove... just banging away at it. Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the music.
I am probably the last of a generation able to gain an education in country music by osmosis, by sitting in a '64 Ford banging the buttons on the radio.
The music I used to make was a lot more rock, so I come from this background of head banging a lot, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it in the context of our music.
When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw for a teenager: there were no cellphones, no Internet, and the only music I had with me was this cassette by Liz Phair. I was writing a lot of poetry, and she embodied a talky style of songwriting that I found very accessible.
Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.
I didn't realize until I was older what a huge music fan my daddy really was, and actually that my grandma played banjo at one time, and I didn't even know that until a year or two ago.
My mom was sort of involved in amateur dramatics like Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and played the violin. My dad played banjo and piano and sang as well, so there was all this music in my childhood.
My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.
I just loved the guitar when it came along. I loved it. The banjo was something I really liked, but when the guitar came along, to me that was my first love in music.
When I got to NYU, I had applied based on playing folk music, and they said, 'You're the banjo girl,' so I thought ,'OK, I'm the banjo girl.'
My father was a banker, but he was an independent spirit. He was a very good pianist and very much into music.
If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.
