Abigail Washburn Quotes

I believe in music because it has the power of change.

I sang in a reggae band. And then there was a soul band where I sang back-up vocals and some lead. And I was also in a women's a capella group. And I was in the gospel choir at school. Actually, I've always been in choirs. Or some kind of group. Just because I love singing so much. But I truthfully never thought of it as a career.

I've noticed that the more I open up, the more I learn.

'Halo' I wrote with my grandpa in his nursing home. When I went to visit him, he'd often comment on my halo. But of course, I couldn't see. And he always - he had pictures of Jesus with these beautiful halos. And so I asked him if he'd write a song with me about Jesus' halo.

I do see music as complete refuge. It's a universal home, complete common ground between everyone; it comes from a place that has no nation and no boundaries around it.

Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea.

I do get around. Geographically, that is.

I played piano and was always in the choir. I tried to play flute because all the pretty girls played flute.

I've moved around so much my whole life, and I've gotten so used to being the Other in situations - the foreigner, the outsider. The first time I've ever felt like there was no separation between me and the other elements was in music.

I would say I've always lived creativity, but now I - I do it with an intention that's got a completely different power.

China was the first time I truly felt like an outsider. I fell in love with the process of trying to become intimate with the culture.

Hogslop is the real deal groovilicious honkin old-time string band. Guaranteed old-time awesomeness with these fellas around!

I reside in a new colony for the Chinese-singing banjo player, with a population of one. At least I have something I have to do with my life.

My whole drive is to make sure that music is a common space where we search for beauty and share it. It needs to be louder than any conversation. That's where we have to go as a human race.

You have to try things you're really afraid of, even if you pee yourself a little bit.

U.S.-China relations doesn't need another lawyer.

Whenever I visited China in the past, the relationships always felt superficial; there was no time where I felt those moments of conflict and delight that make you feel close to another person. But since I started touring there in 2004, I would always collaborate with local musicians, and that opened up a new level of intimacy.

I'm no ethnomusicologist. There is a connection between the five-note scale used both in traditional Chinese music and the blues, but I don't really understand it. All I know is, whenever I play with Chinese musicians, we seem to belong to the same musical gene pool.

I feel like my kind of music is a big pot of different spices. It's a soup with all kinds of ingredients in it.

For most Americans, my Chinese music feels like a novelty, and it's not what it is for me.

I'm, I guess you could say, the Chinese-speaking, banjo-picking girl.

When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut ... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future ... and you don't do it.

I believe in the old, because it shows us where we come from - where our souls have risen from. And I believe in the new, because it gives us the opportunity to create who we are becoming.