Ricky Skaggs Quotes

It doesn't matter if you stick the name 'bluegrass' on it. I think people call things bluegrass that I wouldn't necessarily call bluegrass, but what they're calling country music today I'm not sure that I would call country music. But I love music and I try to encourage people.

I just remember standing there, singing with the headphones on and the strings playing, just how wonderful that felt. But we so rarely got to go out and do it. Obviously, we don't carry a 70-80-piece orchestra with us when we do shows.

I've got tapes that I'm so thankful that my father made - old reel-to-reel tapes. I've got a ton of those things at home. He kept those like fine diamonds, I mean he kept them, you know, in a box and was very, very careful of them, you know.

I try to keep my heart and myself available for those little, 'God moments,' are what I call them, where someone calls the office and says, 'Would Ricky be interested in doing this?'

When I came here it wasn't that I was anti-Music Row, but it was like I was going against the grain of what everybody on Music Row was doing, and that's what has made me successful.

That's kind of the mission statement for the label: to try to do great music that touches people's hearts.

When Jack White called and wanted me to do a video and play mandolin with The Raconteurs, I didn't know anything about The Raconteurs at that time.

I just want to keep playing music and keep recording. I feel like my best days are ahead.

I always had a standard of, back when I was doing the country music I always told people I would never record a song that I wouldn't sit down and sing in front of my mom and dad.

I've had a couple of guys that I've had co-produce records with me through my career, and it's fun to work with a co-producer.

The difference between me and the newer artists is that I have the history with the architects, the masters that started the music. I know where the music came from.

I'm not a goody-two-shoes. I'm just a father with four children.

I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail.

We should give the Lord the excellence He deserves in everything we do.

When I hear bluegrass today, I hear so many new sounds in it. It's almost like country music in a way.

There's art in rhythm playing. Just find it. Make your own art. Find your place, and when it's your time to solo, it's your time to shine.

What I have seen in the past 10 years of traveling- performing at a church one day and a casino the next- is that a lot of people in the church want to be entertained, and people in casinos want to be ministered to. That's hard to understand, but I see a hunger in the world that I don't see in the church.

I hate negative songs; I won't sing them. It doesn't matter if it's sold 2 million more albums.

I look back to when I got divorced in the late 1970s. When that happened, I was so broken up. After that, I decided to seek God for my life and my next marriage.

I always try to entertain folks with good clean fun and stories from my youth.