(Photo: Jamie Younger)

Check out our session with Lund from 2009, and look for more updates from MerleFest on americansongwriter.com.

Ralph Stanley is a man of few words and short answers, and this doesn't make him the ideal interview subject. But at 81 years old, he has earned the right to say as much or as little as he wants, and after over 60 years of playing music, he can be forgiven for not wanting to say it all again.Ralph Stanley is a man of few words and short answers, and this doesn't make him the ideal interview subject. But at 81 years old, he has earned the right to say as much or as little as he wants, and after over 60 years of playing music, he can be forgiven for not wanting to say it all again. No doubt, he's got plenty to talk about, from his boyhood in rural southwest Virginia to his years as half of bluegrass legends the Stanley Brothers and his reintroduction to a new generation of listeners as the mournful voice singing "O Death" on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Now the living embodiment of Appalachian mountain music, he still tours tirelessly and continues to use his band-once the music cradle of artists ranging from Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley to his own son and now 16-year-old grandson-to bring up the next generation. If you ask him, he'll tell you all these things, but don't expect him to elaborate.

So it must be nice to be able to tour with your grandson?
Yeah, I like that real good. He's been playing with me a couple of years. He's only 16 years old, and he's just now getting material together.

Have the crowds at your shows changed much?
I'm having bigger crowds than I used to and different classes of people. Young and old, there's a variety. I give a lot of credit to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and I think that got me out to a lot of new fans and listeners. And I recorded with a few country artists, and I think that helped me spread out, too.

Do you remember the first time you wanted to be a musician?
Well, it was a long time ago. It's back when I was a teenager, maybe 11, 12 or 13. That was about the first time that I ever heard a radio. I got to liking it and me and my brother together decided that we'd like to do that together, if we could. We got a radio in 1939, and I would always listen to it, and there was country music on everyday somewhere. There wasn't too much music around where I was raised. They liked it, but there wasn't that much in that particular part of the world. It was hard back in those days. They had to work sometimes from daylight to dark. And some people like music but aren't interested in playing it. It has changed a lot. Back in my days, there weren't any paved roads. We didn't have electricity back then.

Did it take you long to develop your own style?
Well, no. I think we had God-given talent. It don't sound like anybody [else], and it was a natural sound that we had. I never was too good of a songwriter. I've written a few songs, but my brother was a better songwriter than I am. It took a few years.

How about your style of playing the banjo?
I first played clawhammer banjo, and then I played a two-finger, and then I heard the three-finger. I heard Earl Scruggs. I started to learn that, but I learned my way. I play three-finger, but it's my way of playing. It's not like his.

From what I understand, you come from a long line of banjo players.
A lot of them played the old-time clawhammer. My mother had 11 brothers and sisters, and every one of them played the old clawhammer style. I heard my mother play it, and I first started playing like her. Clawhammer don't suit a lot of songs and singing, so I had to switch to the three-finger style.

How much of an influence did church music have on the way you developed your style?
I think the church and singing influenced us a lot. The singing goes back to the church. There wasn't much music at all in our area. The church we went to did not use music, so we learned to sing a cappella.

Did you and your brother sing well together from the start?
We were real natural. We spoke our words alike, and we liked the same things, and it just fell into place. We were too young to sing much together in church, but we listened to it.

Was it difficult to find your own audience when you started out?
No. When we first started playing on the radio station in Bristol, Virginia and Tennessee, we started a new radio show called "Farm and Fun Time." And first thing we knew, we were getting cards and letters by the sack full by fans requesting songs. We started right off with plenty of listeners. I don't know how we got ‘em, but they appeared.

Do you remember the first time you heard Bill Monroe's music?
About 1939, I'd say. Bill Monroe has always been my favorite, but I don't sound a bit like Bill Monroe. I have my own sound. It's old-time traditional music.

Once the king of the glitterbillies-the term he coined for the style of music known for a rhinestone suits and rockabilly backbeats-Marty Stuart seems comfortable with more modest apparel, both in terms of music and clothing.

Once the king of the glitterbillies-the term he coined for the style of music known for a rhinestone suits and rockabilly backbeats-Marty Stuart seems comfortable with more modest apparel, both in terms of music and clothing. Now 50 and with flecks of gray in his once jet-black pompadour, he sits on a leather chair in his tour bus and plays riffs on a well worn mandolin while fielding interview questions. He now prefers music that's a little quieter and little more raw, but he certainly hasn't mellowed with age, positioning himself at the center of America's great bedrock forms with a series of gospel and roots albums. But as much as he seems to be reinventing himself, he's really just returning to where he started when he was making a living playing music when most kids are booting groundballs in little league. Having gotten his start as a 12-year-old bluegrass prodigy-playing mandolin with the Sullivans and the Lester Flatt before riding shotgun with his hero, Johnny Cash-Stuart's career has been defined by struggle and success. Whichever one of those options wins out in the future, one thing is certain: he'll get there on his own terms.

I didn't realize it, but you once played as a member of Doc Watson's band.
Yeah, for a summer's worth of concerts in about 1980, and I felt like we played about 20 years worth of music in that one summer. It stands as one of the most enjoyable musical experiences of my life. It was Doc and Merle and T. Michael [Coleman] and me, and it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I had never been a part of music at that level at that time. Coming out of Lester Flatt's band was wonderful, but [Doc and Merle] played at a different place. It was something.

Then, after that is when you joined Johnny Cash's band.
The last date that I had with Doc and Merle was in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and then they were going to go on hiatus for a few months. And I had no idea where I was going to go to work next. We had a matinee show in Cedar Rapids, and I went back to the hotel after the first set, and the light was blinking on my phone. It was my mom, and she said that one of the guys in Johnny Cash's band was looking for me and that Johnny Cash wanted to talk to me. I called, and he said, "John wants to know if you want to come talk about being in his band," and I said, "Well, this is a good time to talk!" And he said, "How about tomorrow?" and I said, "Sure." They were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was about two hours away. So I got a rental car and drove to Cedar Rapids, which was about two hours away. I never saw him. I talked to him on the phone, and they stood me on my spot, and that's how I got started with Johnny Cash.

Were you nervous?
No. He called me, and when I first got to the hotel in Cedar Rapids, his guitar player and band leader, Bob Wooten, got me acclimated and told me what time he'd be leaving to go to the show. So I sat down at the restaurant, and the maitre d' came and said, "Mr. Cash' is on the phone for you." He said, "Hey, son." I said, "Hi, J.R." He said, "Do you know my songs?" I said, "Every one of ‘em. Do you still do them in the same key?" He said, "Probably. Do you have anything black to wear?" I said, "Probably." He said, "Well, that's good. I'm probably going to take a nap, and I'm probably going to see you in a few minutes. Bye." And that's all there was to it.

What was it like the first time you met Johnny Cash?
It was a few months previous to that in Jack Clement's studio. I went with a friend of mine named Danny Ferrington who had built him a guitar to deliver it. And when I shook hands with him, he kept looking me, and like I've said, I heard thunder. And I really did. He just kept looking at me, and he said, "Where you from?" I said, "Mississippi." He said, "Where you been?" I said, "Gettin' ready." He said, "Alright," and we hung out that night. Nothing serious. And we hung out one other time, and that was it until that phone call came, and that was three or four months later. I've said before, sometimes I think God puts people on your heart early on if you're supposed to meet them and know about them, and the first two records I ever owned in my life were Flatt & Scruggs and Johnny Cash. And the only two gigs that I ever had were with Johnny Cash and Lester Flatt, so I was ready. I really was prepared.

When you ended up marrying Johnny Cash's daughter, did that change your relationship with him?
No. We kept it totally separate-business. We were friends before any of that occurred, so we left it at that.

Was that a hard decision when you left Johnny's band?
No. It was time. I think he knew it, and I knew it. He helped me get a recording contract with Columbia. There weren't any bad feelings or anything. I left with his blessing, and he helped me. It really didn't change much of anything, other than the fact that I wasn't going on the road with him anymore. To the day that he died, when he called and wanted me to go play the guitar, he was still the chief. He came and helped me on sessions. He played on records of mine, and I played on his, and we were next-door neighbors. Really, not much changed.

When you first went solo and were getting established, did you look to him for advice?
Sure. He was always there for advice. One of the things that I remember is that we got booked to play the Billy Graham crusade. Don't ask me why. But I knew that he'd been playing them since the ‘50s, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to ask or how to be, so that was one of the times that I called him and said, "Help!" And he never ever pushed advice, but he was there any time that it was asked.

And then there was a period of time that you went home and recharged for awhile in the late ‘80s, the time before Hillbilly Rock.
Yeah, I had no choice but to go home, because nothing else was working.

And you ended up playing with the Sullivans again?
Yeah, because the Sullivans were the first people that I ever played with, and Jerry Sullivan called and invited me out to play for a weekend, and I went back and played the same kind of little churches and events that I played with them when I was a kid. There was nothing else to do that summer except get my life back together. But it worked out great, and I enjoyed it, because I got to go down that trail of Southern culture that there is very little left of. See, they started their church meetings in what they called brush arbors, which were makeshift churches in the woods made out of brush into an arbor. And that's where that kind of music that they play came from, and I used to call them "children of the brush arbors," and they were like American Indians. They were a vanishing people. There are very few people left that used to play that old brush arbor circuit, and I'm glad that I got to go back to see that one more time. That's what happened that summer. I would up producing a couple records for Jerry and Tammy of songs that we wrote along that way that summer. It was a very beneficial time.

Did it feel like you were starting over at that time?
Yeah, but I've never been afraid of new starts. As I get older, I hate ‘em, but I'm not scared of them. If you're a true artist-or any human being-it's the evolution of circles. Always going back to the beginning, yet again. A new chapter. It used to tear me down to where I thought I had to tear everything apart, disassemble everything that I've ever done in my life, and start over. Now it's more like a continuation. It isn't quite as severe [laughs]. There's more breathing when you look at it that way.

It must have been gratifying when Hillbilly Rock became a big hit then.
Well, it was. It finally gave me a reason to get out and have a bus and a band and put on cowboy clothes and live the dream. We had a string of good hits through that time, and I was really playing that radio game and doing that whole hillbilly star thing. I loved every minute of it.

After that you became very interested in preserving country's roots. Do you see yourself as responsible for preserving the traditions that came before you?
Well, it's probably self-imposed, but it's more a family thing to me. Those people raised me when I was a kid, and they gave me a place to play. They gave me a family away from home. As time went on, and country music started changing into more of a commercialized industry beyond the mom-and-pop-setup that it was founded on, I saw that more of those people that I loved were being disregarded. Their treasures and contributions were being swept under the carpet, and I saw this as an injustice. The question I posed was, "Why do we have to breech with the past? That's our foundation and our roots. Why not take the entire story forward?" It's great that Carrie Underwood is out there and Kenny Chesney is packing stadiums tonight, but does that diminish the contributions of Doc and Merle or the Carter Family or Willie Nelson or Connie Smith or Johnny Cash of Snuffy Jenkins? No. It's all part of the same family, and it should move forward as such, I believe. If anything, I'm an antagonist to make sure that that happens. A radical preservationist, maybe, but an antagonist, too. A reminder.

So what was it like to work with Porter Wagoner on his last record?
It was divine. It was a divine mission. I don't know if you're familiar with a TV channel called RFD, but everything is rural. I came in from the front of the bus one day, and they still air The Porter Wagoner Show like it is current programming, and I really got back in touch with Porter's show. He'd always been my buddy, but I decided it was time to go back and see Porter. It made me miss him. So I went home to Nashville, and 15 minutes into the visit I knew I wanted to produce a record, because he kept playing me these songs that were almost like well-kept secrets that he was just waiting for the right time to tell. I thought, this is not going to be easy to get somebody interested in a 79-year-old man who has been there and done that more times than we can imagine. Nashville passed on him, and I found him the deal with Anti- Records out in California. And it worked. My pitch to Porter was that "You don't have to change one thing about yourself. You just be Porter Wagoner. We got you covered." And my goal was to get a guitar back around his neck, get his pompadour back up, and get kids to dig it. And we did that simply by putting his sound around him again. I think after Dolly left, he started chasing a little bit, just trying to keep up with the times, and I understand that. But it was time to put him inside of the sound that made him great and famous, and it worked. And it was an honor to be there.

I talked to him a few months before he passed, and he said there were hundreds of songs that he had that he never recorded. Would those songs have just gone with him?
Probably. At least some of them.

That must be pretty satisfying to know that you got him one last shot.
When we were standing there on stage at Madison Square Garden opening for the White Stripes, he looked at me and said, "We're doing pretty good aren't we?" And I said, "We're doing pretty good. Keep going." That was a pretty good moment.

I bet. Did you know at that time that he was sick?
Well, we had to cancel the sessions, because he had an aneurysm, and it delayed the sessions from July to November. So it was pretty known that he was kind of weak, but most days were pretty good, and he was intent and had something to live for, and he was really pulling toward being his best again. As sick as he turned out to be? No, I had no idea. He was supposed to go up to the White House and light the National Christmas Tree, and I was going to help him get his music together, so I went by and saw him and said, "I'll be back in two weeks, and we'll get this done." And when I went back in two weeks, I could tell that something was terribly wrong. It happened that fast. And two more weeks later, and he was gone. We went to Cracker Barrel and were having a salad and telling jokes one day, and two weeks later it was over.

Since you're so connected with an earlier generation of country music, you have the benefit of getting to know them all, but you also have to bury them all.
That's true. And it hurts. It leaves a void that can't nothing but God fill up. I've tried filling that up with dope and liquor years ago, and none of that makes sense. It just makes more messes. It's just life. It's a hard assignment. But at the same time, knowing those people is worth any of the pain that you have to go through to get there.

So what's next for you?
Well, we're finishing up the first season of "Marty Stuart's American Odyssey" on XM. That's the closest thing to a job that I've ever had. My book is coming out in wide release this Christmas. As far as records go, I've got about three songs and that leaves up 12 to go, so it's a long walk to the microphone. I'm not in any hurry to get there, since we've put out four records in the past three years. It's time to put a real inspired record out there. I'm feeling a real need to play some real country music-a fresh take on country music. So we'll see.

So, overall, this has been a pretty good life. Is this anything you ever could have imagined when you were a kid?
It's what I dreamed about. I had a pretty good feeling that this is what it was going to be. I got there as fast as I could [laughs], and I wouldn't have had anything else to do had this not been here. It's my life, and I love it.

Probably the only musician who will ever be able to say that he has shared stages with both Ralph Stanley and Phish, Ricky Skaggs has squeezed a full lifetime of music into his 54 years.

Probably the only musician who will ever be able to say that he has shared stages with both Ralph Stanley and Phish, Ricky Skaggs has squeezed a full lifetime of music into his 54 years. Sipping bottled water and checking his cell phone messages as he sits in the back of a modestly furnished tour bus, he looks like a fully modern man, but he has never hidden the fact that he now sees his mission as preserving the past. Today, before another in a string of collaborative performances with pianist Bruce Hornsby, that fact is pushed to the side, and he's worried about cramming their usual two-hour set into a paltry 60-minute show. Monroe and Stanley probably wouldn't wade into the swift confluence of styles that turn up during Hornsby and Skaggs' more experimental jams, but the crowd - a mix of deadheads and traditional bluegrass fans-lap it up. It's just another chapter in an already overstuffed career-one that could produce several more volumes before it's finished.

Since you've been doing this since you were a kid, did you ever have any other career aspirations?
Not really. I've always been able to stay self-satisfied in my heart with music. I've made money with my music all my life. When I was seven-years-old, I did Flatt & Scruggs' TV show and got paid $52.50 in a check, and in 1961 that was a lot of money, especially for a seven-year-old. It was pretty amazing. So I knew there were financial reasons to want to do it. Then I started with Ralph Stanley when I was 15, and he started paying $25 a day, which wasn't a lot of money. But the next year he gave us a raise to $30, $35 Saturday, and $35 Sunday, and that made us $100 for a weekend-me and Keith Whitley. That wasn't bad. Later on, I started getting more salaried positions with the Country Gentleman and Emmylou Harris. Boone Creek was tough. We had to slice it four ways and pay all the expenses, and it was a lot of work to do everything. As far as the satisfaction part, I was content to play even during the time I had another job. I had one job that I can somewhat boast about. I worked at an electric company in Virginia, and I sucked so bad at that. I was just awful. I flooded the basement one night. I was supposed to be washing out a boiler, and I had my banjo with me at work, in a little break room upstairs. And I got my banjo out and was playing some and let the time slip by, and the next thing I knew an hour had gone by, and that thing had overflowed and I saw these 50-gallon drums floating on the basement floor. And I saw my supervisor knee-deep in water, and he was about ready to kill me. So I just knew. I really believed God had called me to be a musician. I said then, "If I can play full time, that's what I want to do." About that time the Country Gentlemen needed a fiddle player, and that was the first time they'd ever hired a fiddle player, so I was able to play some fiddle and acoustic guitar with them. So that was a full-time position for me, and from then on I've stayed in the business of music.

Since you were such a small boy when you played on the Flatt & Scruggs show, were you nervous going up there in front of so many people?
You know, it has been on YouTube for years, and it's now on DVD. I have a copy on my iPhone and I watch it sometimes. I don't look nervous. It's funny. I look at myself and I see a confidence there. Paul Warren was supposed to take a fiddle break, and he didn't take it. And I cocked my eye over looking at him, like, "This is how we worked it up. You're supposed to play there." So I was just chucking rhythm. I wasn't going to start playing solo like I was the one to mess up. "Uh-uh. Not me." So I had some confidence. Not arrogance, I don't think. Maybe on later people might have accused me of that, and I probably was arrogant. I'm sure I was. But I don't remember being real nervous or anything. Even the first time I played at the Grand Ole Opry, I remember having butterflies, but I knew I was supposed to be there. It was something that I'd wanted in my heart for years. I wanted to be a part of that. I'd heard it so much from my home in Kentucky where we lived. We listened to it religiously every weekend, on Friday and Saturday nights, and when we lived in Nashville, we would go to the Opry on the weekends. We just loved the Opry, and seeing music and seeing people come out on stage. It was just an awesome thing. But I don't remember being too nervous.

When you first met Keith Whitley, did you realize he was a special musician?
No. Not really. When I first met him, I knew that we were like-minded. I knew that we had a lot in common. I knew that he loved the same kind of music that I did and singers and songs and bands that I did. I felt like, in my heart, that we would be friends, that this wouldn't be our first and only meeting. As a matter of fact, I invited him over to my house the next weekend, and he came. And we just sang and played together, and my dad joined in, and his brother, Dwight, played on banjo. We had an awesome relationship. We met Ralph Stanley at a beer joint in West Virginia, right across the Kentucky line, across the Big Sandy River. We went over to see him, and Roy Lee Centers had just joined the band, and we heard how much he sounded like Carter, so we wanted to go and hear him. By accident, Ralph was going to be late. He called the promoter and told him the bus had broken down and they were going to be an hour late. So the club owner had heard of me, and my dad played, and he said, "Could you all get up and sing a little bit while Ralph is getting here?" Of course, my dad's theory was "Always be prepared. Always take your instruments with you." So we had them in our car, and we said, "Yeah, we'll do that. No problem. We'll help."' The only songs Keith and I knew were Stanley Brothers songs, so we're up there playing, and our instrument cases are back there in Ralph's dressing room. And we were on stage, and Ralph comes walking in, and the band comes walking in and is going backstage, and Ralph pulls up a chair and is listening. And nobody is bothering him, like, "Hey, Ralph! How are you doing, buddy? Can I have an autograph." He's just sitting there, and I'm looking at him and singing, wondering what he's thinking. Is he thinking what are these young smart aleck kids doing up there? Or is he digging it? I asked him about it later on, and he said "Man, I was just reminiscing of the days me and Carter were starting, and it sounded so much like what we were singing like when we were your age." So that was pretty cool, and that started a relationship with Ralph. Keith had one year of school left, and so did I, and we ended up getting a job from Ralph as soon as we got out of school to go work for him full-time. I grew to know how special Keith was, but I didn't know that at our first meeting. I didn't see prominence and brilliance, and neither did he see it on me, I'm sure. We were just a bunch of kids that loved all kinds of music, but especially the Stanley Brothers. They were our heroes.

So how long after that did Ralph ask you to join his band?
See, I had sung a couple times with Ralph and Carter, just as a guest. So he remembered me, especially after my dad said, "This boy played with ya'll when he was little." "Why yeah! He growed up," Ralph said. I guess after that night in West Virginia, we went down to Ralph's house in Virginia and met his mom, and his wife, who was pregnant with his first daughter. That was probably three or four months after we met. And they were having a bluegrass festival in Camp Springs, North Carolina, and I think that was in July. And Ralph asked us to go down there with him, because they were doing "The Stanley Brothers Story," like a Stanley Brothers reunion/history kind of thing. So Ralph wanted me and Keith to come down and sing some of the old songs that he and Carter and Pee Wee Lambert did when they were starting out. That's the stuff that Keith and I loved, and we were so excited. We got on the bus in Virginia. We went to somebody's house first and got some moonshine, and here we were 15 years old! We had no bed to sleep in, so we had to sit up in these old bus seats. They had some bunks in the back, but in the front you just had to sit up. There were no couches or TV's or any of that. I think you could lean them back a click or two. But we were so excited that we couldn't hardly stand it. We couldn't believe it. When the bus pulled out, my stomach started turning in knots because I was so excited. He hired us after that show, and then New Year's Eve we went to Columbus, Ohio, and played at a show up there. I think it was probably after that show that he said that he'd like for us to play with him in the summer after we finished school and that he'd get us a full-time job after we graduated. And, to me, that was college. It would be the same as a math major or a quantum physics major going out on the road with Einstein.

What was it like to have Ralph Stanley, this musician who you had admired your whole life, become your boss?
Well, it was cool. He was very easy to work for, and he was good about giving me some direction. Being young, as a musician your tendency is to grow and get better at your instrument and to stretch your boundaries and learn more stuff. I was learning from other mandolin players of the day. When I was living in Kentucky, it was Bill Monroe records that I was listening to, or Bobby Osborne, or Pee Wee Lambert, who had played with the Stanley Brothers 25 or 30 years before that. I was mostly listening to old records, and there was maybe one mandolin player in the country that I knew about, and he wasn't very good. I was pretty much on my own to learn, and whatever I could learn, I had to get off a record. But I remember that once we started playing the festival circuit, I started hanging out with other mandolin players, and you know how it would be with like-minded musicians and all. I was trying to learn some of their licks. I remember playing those licks one night in some of Ralph's songs, and I remember him looking over at me one night, like, "You shouldn't have played that. That doesn't fit here." And afterwards, he was real gentle about it. He said, "You know, there are some styles that work together, and some that don't. When you're taking a break,"-which is what he calls it-"I want the audience to be able to know what that tune is without me singing it." I said, "OK, that makes a lot of sense. I can do that." So I've carried that in my head and even taught it to my musicians, as well. Really, if you think about it, and you go back and listen to Django [Reinhardt] and Stephane Grappelli, the first time through was the melody always. Even if it was "Tiger Rag." The second time through, it's get-up-and-play-every-note-you-know. With Bob Wills' music, they would establish the melody as a band. The whole band would play-it might be fiddles, it might be a steel guitar, it might be an electric guitar. They would all play the melody, and then each individual member would swing a solo. That was just his sound, more like a big-band thing. I understood that, and I passed it on to my musicians, as well. It's OK to stretch out on a solo, but somewhere come back to the melody, just to be cool. Most people want to just keep blowing.

So when you started your solo career, what were you expecting?
Oh gosh...it was such a new adventure. I'd already had some experience in the areas of booking and management with Boone Creek, and I knew I didn't want to do that again. I didn't want to do a partnership with somebody. I was willing to pay for it all myself and even invest in it my time so that I could get paid on the other end of it, somehow, later on. And I'm still waiting for that! [Laughs] As far as expectations, I really didn't know what to expect. When I was with Emmy, I was getting experience in areas of music that I really hadn't traipsed around in much, especially with electric instruments-steel guitar, piano, drums, electric bass, electric guitar. So working with her those two years helped me know how that stuff flows and how it works together, but I wanted to do something more traditional than what she was doing. That whole Roses in the Snow thing, I was so involved with that that it was amazing. I brought a lot of songs to the project and oversaw a lot of the solos and harmony stuff. I had produced some Boone Creek stuff, but as far as a major label and a major album, that was my induction into producing and co-producing with somebody. I think what I was hoping was that people would like what they heard. I had done an album while I was with her called Sweet Temptation for Sugar Hill Records. That was my first venture into a country and bluegrass mixture. There was a song on that that did real good called "I'll Take the Blame," and it was No.1 in three markets in the U.S. So people and labels, especially guys that were working radio at CBS and RCA, they were beginning to hear the name "Ricky Skaggs," "that guy who sings with Emmylou." So when I did my second record for Sugar Hill, and that ended up being Waitin' for the Sun to Shine for Sony, because they bought it from Sugar Hill. I don't think I expected anything. What I knew was that it was going to take a lot of work, and I had just gone through a divorce, and I knew I was going to be away from my kids a whole lot more. I had two kids from my first marriage, and they are 28 and 30 now. I knew I was going to be working a lot and away from them, and I knew it was going to be a long time until I was able to get into a bus and have a good band, but things started happening really quick. Our first single went Top 40, number 26, actually-"Don't Get Above Your Raisin'." And then "You May See Me Walking" was Top 10, and "Crying My Heart Out Over You" was No. 1, my third single. And then I had 12 No. 1's in a row. Boy, it happened so fast, and I just couldn't believe how quick things were happening and on such a massive scale. We'd go to a city somewhere that I hadn't been before, and all these people were there and had come out to see me. It was unbelievable, like, "I've never been here before. How'd you all know I was coming?" It really opened my eyes to radio and how powerful that medium was at the time, much more than it is now. I was getting educated a lot, really quick.

I was looking over your career, and around 1978 you made a record with Tony Rice, you made your first solo record, you were playing with the Hot Band, and you were in Boone Creek. How did you do all four of those things at the same time?
Well, Boone Creek had pretty much dissolved by then, and I was really hoping that they'd stay together and keep going. I thought it was a good sound that we'd established, and I thought they could have found another mandolin player and tenor singer and gone on, but they didn't want to. That was tragic, but looking back on it now; it worked out, especially for Jerry. He went on and did things. Terry Baucom went back home for awhile and then did a few things with another band. But Wes Golding, he just went back to Canaan, Va., and never really did much. He was a writer and a good singer and good guitar player, and I felt there was a lot more he could have done. But sometimes people don't have the drive it takes to put something together and be the guy responsible for squirting oil in all the moving parts, keeping it all going. I felt like I had done that from day one. Keith and I had wanted to put together a band, even when we were with Ralph. We always had plans to do that. But when Roy Lee Centers was murdered, I remember at the funeral, we went and had lunch with Ralph, and he asked Keith to come and sing with him full-time. And Keith did and stayed with him for four or five years. So that kind of shot down any future that he and I had together. I figured I would move on and do things.

I did go with Emmy in ‘78 and ‘79, and then up until August of 1980 I was with her. During that time in ‘78, I was in L.A. quite a bit, and I'd go out and work on the road, or I'd go and work in the studio with Emmy. And if I had a weekend off and had to work again on Monday, I'd just stay in L.A. I wouldn't fly back to Kentucky with my family. So Tony and I decided to do a record. I had done that Manzanita record with him and some other recordings with [David] Grisman, and he and I had an idea to do a duet record-just mandolin and guitar and sing some old Monroe Brothers and Stanley Brothers things. So that's how that all came about, and that happened in that year. It was a busy time. I've never been afraid of work. I've always worked a lot, and I've got my thumbprint on a whole bunch of stuff out there.

Then the neo-traditionalist movement started. Were you ever able to stand back and say, "Wow, this is really because of me"?
I never knew what that meant-"neo-traditionalist." Everybody would write about me, like, "The King of Neo-traditional Country," and I'd be like, "What is that?" Me and George Strait and Reba [McEntire] were the three younger kids. She was already doing some country records and had been an up-and-comer, but she hadn't had a No. 1 record yet. But we all came out about the same time, and of the three of us, I was the first to have a hit. And then George has one with "Unwound," and he just took off. Country music had a really young following at that time, and then Randy Travis and Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt and Steve Wariner and Clint Black came along. I started trying to keep my position, and music was starting to change in the ‘90s. It was getting a whole lot more female and a whole lot more pop, kind of like it was when I came to Nashville in ‘80 and ‘81. It was a different sound then. Brooks & Dunn and Garth [Brooks] were having the great big tours-circus tours, basically, swinging in on grapevines and seeing how big a tour could be. And I said, "I will not compete with that. I'm not going to swing in on stage and drop down. That's not who I am. I'm not going to do that. I don't care if I sell 500 million records. My integrity is worth more to me, because I want to do this for a long time." I don't want to retire, because what am I going to do? I couldn't hold down a job at a gas station. Those guys were really moving on, and I felt like they were increasing and I was decreasing. My share of stock was worth less in the business. So I started trying to figure out how I could reinvent myself. Bill Monroe passed away in 1996, and I had been feeling for six months to a year this deep calling to go back and really revisit my roots, to go back and clean that well out that had been stopped up. And I went back and realized there was more there than I had ever dug into before. God had given me a scripture at Bill Monroe's funeral, and it was Isaiah 11:11, and it says, "In that day, I will extend my hand a second time." And it was like I knew exactly what he was talking about. At his passing, he's gone. "Moses, my servant is dead. Joshua you're going to go on." That kind of thing. I felt like God was going to bless that old traditional music again. The humble things He exalts. Pride, he resists. I felt like if I could stay humble and play music of the people, music of the heart, music of God and family, that I would be in really good stead with God, and I'd rather have Him promoting me than Sony any day. I started Skaggs Family Records in 1997, and that was a great thing for me. It was a costly thing, and it ended up costing a lot of the money I was making on the road to keep it going, but I knew there was a future in it if I could make good records and get artists who could make good records that the masters would be worth something. It's almost like a couture label, where I could pick the cream of the crop and record them. It's been a lot of work, and a lot of things have worked, and a lot of things haven't. You don't get that money back when something doesn't work, and that's why we don't do videos. You spend $30,000 for a video, and there's no guarantee that CMT will play it. I'm some dumb but I ain't plumb dumb. Anyway, I'm really glad to have the label, and it has some great artists. I love the fact that we're trying to keep it small and not trying to be another Rounder. We're trying to keep it small and real effective at what it is. We've won a lot of Grammy's since we've gone back to bluegrass, and that has been a real encouragement to me.

So what's next for you?
Well, I think TV is still big, and I think the Internet is big, and I think satellite radio is doing pretty well. I would like to figure out, time-wise, if I could afford the time to do another television show like I did with "Monday Night Concerts" with CMT. Or maybe something with Internet broadcasts on a somewhat regular basis. We're trying to figure out how to hit more people at once and let my time be more valuable there than going out to play for 1000 tonight, 2000 tomorrow night, and 500 the next night. Not that I want to get off the road; it's not that. I do like being able to travel and play and be close to people. But some sort of television or something may be in the works. We're redoing my old country hits and doing them bluegrass. I'll tell you, some of the tracks I think are better than the originals. And we're having fun doing this thing with Bruce. I don't think either one of us is down for quitting it. I don't know that we necessarily need to go back into the studio and do another record. We might do a live CD, where we can do all kinds of weird stuff and ten-minute versions of songs. We're having fun and would like to keep doing it.

Though it took him awhile to become a household name in Americana circles, throughout his career, Del McCoury has demonstrated time and again he has impeccable timing. Whether meeting Bill Monroe at the precise moment the Father of Bluegrass needed a new lead vocalist in 1963 or greatly expanding his following by taking a shrewd turn as Steve Earle's backing band in 1999, he has proven his timing is perfect both when charting his course as an artist and when he is making a G-run on an acoustic guitar.Though it took him awhile to become a household name in Americana circles, throughout his career, Del McCoury has demonstrated time and again he has impeccable timing. Whether meeting Bill Monroe at the precise moment the Father of Bluegrass needed a new lead vocalist in 1963 or greatly expanding his following by taking a shrewd turn as Steve Earle's backing band in 1999, he has proven his timing is perfect both when charting his course as an artist and when he is making a G-run on an acoustic guitar. With the current financial crisis ravaging America's financial institutions, McCoury again proves his foresight with Moneyland, a collection of songs by artists ranging from Merle Haggard to Bruce Hornsby that express the deeply felt concerns of people struggling to make ends meet. In the process, he has made an album both remarkably timeless and unfortunately timely, a stirring testament to our ability to persist through hardship and an elegy to a lost way of life.

So how'd you go about picking the songs for this record?
Well, I had a lot of help in that. My manager, Stan [Strickland], it was kind of his idea to do this. I came up with that song, "Moneyland." I said, "This is a great song, and I'd like to record it." And he got to thinking, and I did, too, that we ought to do an album to call attention to the way things are right now. That's the way the album came about, and we started to talking to other people about it, and they wanted to submit songs. Most of them are friends of mine. So we approached them about using a song that suited the album, and we got permission from them all to do that, and it worked out good.

Was there anything in your community that inspired you to make an album like this?
Well, yeah, just the way things are. It's like Bruce Hornsby said in his song, "That's just the way it is." It's a shame. You see, my dad was too old to go in the Second World War, but he worked in a defense plant. And when the war was over, he bought a farm, and he told my mom, "We better buy a farm, because we might starve to death." Things might get bad. The war made prosperity. Everyone had a job and could work. We figured that after the war, all these jobs were going to go and that he better buy a farm so that we could have a cow and chicken and not starve to death. But when the war was over, prosperity was just starting in the ‘50s. We really wouldn't have anything to worry about. And that lasted until lately when we started losing our jobs to other countries and the corporate farmers came, and they're doing well, but the family farmer-it's really rough on them. And these oil guys charging us so much money that people can't even afford to drive to work. It's a shame. We're just hoping that something will come of it.

Do you see a lot of practical solutions for these problems?
No, I don't. I'm really ignorant as to how to fix any of this. But I can sing about it! I'm sure that up there in Washington, D.C., those guys could fix it if they would. This friend of mine, he's a member of the Opry down here, Trace Adkins. He has a daughter who is really allergic to certain foods, and he said he'd go up to Washington to sit down and talk to certain Senators. And they listened as intently as they could, but at the end they said, "Man, we'd really like to help you if we could." He said, "I was really just wasting my breath up there! They're not going to do anything about that." But I'm sure they'll do something up there in Washington because there are too many people hurting today.

Do you think music has the power to change people's minds?
I think it really helps to get people's attention and to get people organized and into lobbying these things. I think it does that. We did the album, and it's pretty serious all the way through. This friend of mine wrote this song "Forty Acres and a Fool," and it fits this album, but it has a little comedy in it, and it breaks up all this seriousness.

So what inspired you to perform The Beatles' "When I'm 64" for this record?
Well, he's talking about retirement. I've got a house up in York, Pennsylvania, and the porch needs fixing up there, and I called this guy who came out and gave us a bid to fix this porch. And he says, "Now, I won't do this work. My sons will come out to do this work." And my wife says, "Well, what will you do?" And he says, "I'm an engineer, but my job went to China, so I'm working for my sons now." That's hard to believe, because the guy has a great education and is an engineer, but he can't retire from that company where he started. Companies used to keep people until retirement time. Nowadays, if a young guy gets a job, he has no guarantee that he's going to be able retire there. That's the reason we recorded that song. But I'm way passed that age.

Is there any retirement plan for bluegrass musicians?
Well, really, there isn't. You just have to watch your money. I know some guys that are millionaires from playing bluegrass music. One of them is Ralph Stanley and another was Jimmy Martin. Bill Monroe made three fortunes, but I don't think he saved any of it. Earl Scruggs is one of the richest men in Tennessee. He and Eddy Arnold. They bought land. That was their retirement. I guess if a person is smart, he can do that. Those guys were.

I should have heard "When I'm 64," but when that song came out, I was working the road with Bill Monroe. He was a member of the Opry. He joined in 1939, and we were doing the Opry and running the roads all the time. There was TV back then, but we didn't really see that much of it, being on the road all the time. I didn't really know who The Beatles were. I'd just heard the name. I'd never heard this "When I'm 64" until not long before I recorded it. But what a great song. When I listened to music, I'd always listen to bluegrass. I missed a lot of the rock and roll.

So have you gone back and listened to those Beatles' albums?
No, I haven't done that, but I'm kind of busy. Sometimes my sons will know about a song that they think I might be interested in recording, and that's the way I get to hear things.

Do you remember the first time you heard bluegrass music?
Well, when I was growing up, my father and my oldest brother-he's nine years older than me, my oldest brother-they would listen to the Grand Ole Opry. This was pre-television days, in the ‘40s. There weren't that many people that had television until the late ‘40s, so they'd listen to the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night, and that was entertainment. It was 50,000 watts clear channel, WSM was then, so at night it would just go forever. So that was the first time I heard bluegrass, hearing Bill Monroe on there and not realizing that the guy that invented it I was listening to right then. Of course, from that all these other bands came. Flatt & Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, the Osborne Brothers, the Stanley Brothers-they all came from there. I was second generation of bluegrass, although I did work for Bill Monroe in 1963. Then in 1965, we had the first bluegrass festival, and from that everything grew. People started coming to those festivals from Japan and Europe, and the music just started spreading. It became internationally known from that. Then 20 years after that, we organized the International Bluegrass Music Association, and we've had an awards show ever since. I've seen it grow a lot since then. The music is really popular now. I've heard some people say, "We don't want it to get too popular." Well, I say, "It needs to get popular because it's good music." It's like how sometimes you'll hear a bluegrass musician in a commercial or a movie, but you never really hear a good hardcore bluegrass band. Like that Deliverance. They had a guitar and banjo in there, and Don Reno-he was an ex-Bluegrass Boy-and he teamed with Red Smiley. But that was a watered down version. It's getting better today. It's getting to be that they are using some really good musicians now.

Do you remember the first time you met Bill Monroe?
Yeah. I saw him in 1950. They used to play these drive-in theaters that had these movies. That's when all these drive-in theaters came in, after the second war. These bands would go and play between the movies. They'd stand up on the roof of the refreshment stand. They'd have a microphone, and their music would go out in the speakers in the cars that they'd hang on the windows. After the song, instead of applauding, they'd all blow their horns. So that's where I saw Bill Monroe first, and it was really exciting. They were all dressed up. They wore Stetsons back then and riding boots and pants. He was a great foxhunter. He had horses and rode horses, so that's how he dressed, back before I went with him. By the time I joined him, he wasn't wearing riding britches anymore. Before that, that's how him and his band dressed-these big, tall black boots, and those riding pants and hats. Oh, they looked sharp.

Were you nervous the first time you met him?
Oh yeah. I really was. That was the first time I saw him, and I would have been 11. But the first time I met him, I played with him. I was really fortunate. I was playing in Baltimore in a club for a guy named Jack Cook, and he had been with Bill Monroe for about three years, as his lead singer and guitar player. At this time, I was a banjo player, and I was working for Jack. And Bill came to Baltimore, and he needed Jack to go with him to play Town Hall in New York City, and he didn't have a banjo player. They were just going to go as a four-piece. So I met him and played with him at Town Hall in New York City. All we did was tune up and rehearse one song, and then we went right out on stage. I know a lot of people who saw that show. By that time, I was pretty good, and it was probably hard to tell by listening to me that I wasn't really familiar with all that stuff. I could play pretty well without making mistakes. Peter Wernick and David Grisman were in that audience, I think, because they were going to college there at the time. And then [Bill] offered me a steady job, because he didn't have a steady banjo player. It was in the wintertime, and he must have lost two musicians just prior to that. He had a lot of people in Nashville that could play with him when he played the Grand Ole Opry or went on the road, but he offered me a job in the fall of ‘62, and I waited until the February of ‘63 before I decided. I thought, well, I ought to go down and see if I make the grade. But when I got down there, he still needed this lead singer and guitar player worse than anything, and he wanted me to try out doing that. So that's what I did, and I never went to playing banjo since! It's the craziest thing to change right in the middle.

What was it like to work for Bill Monroe?
I enjoyed it. I was single then, and it probably didn't matter all that much that I was gone all the time. People said he was hard to work for, but I didn't find him that way. I'll tell you the way he was; he was a man of few words. He never said much. If you got on stage and you worked hard, and he could tell you were working with him, he wouldn't say anything to you. But if he found someone he thought was lazy, oh, he would ride him! I got along good with him, and I learned a lot about what you have to do on stage to keep it going and entertain the people.

Was it difficult to leave his band?
Yes, it was in a way. I was offered a job in California with a bluegrass band that had a TV show in Huntington Park, which is just in the suburbs of L.A. So me and the fiddle player that were playing with Bill quit and went out there. I got married and moved to California. We were young, and you do foolish things sometimes. I should have stayed longer, I know. But things work out for the best usually. I missed playing with him. He trained a lot of musicians. He didn't teach them; they just came in the band, and they learned from example. He was not a good teacher as far as sitting down and telling you to do something in a certain way. He just got out of you what was in you, whatever that was.

It must be gratifying that today you're carrying on his tradition?
Yeah, it is, really. He's the one that got this mess going. I didn't really think of that in the earlier years, but now that I know a lot of people look up to me, it's gratifying.

So what have you been working on lately?
What we're in the middle of right now is a record called Fifty Songs for Fifty Years, because they say I've been doing this for 50 years now. We're recording songs from the ‘60s, like ten songs from each decade. We're just about done. We've recorded 35 songs so far, and I own some of the later ones, so I don't have to re-record them. It will come out as a 50-song CD set.

Does it seem like you've been playing bluegrass for 50 years?
No, it don't. It seems like maybe two. [Laughs] Time flies after you hit 21, don't it? I'm telling you, I'm just wondering where all the years went. But it don't seem like 50 years.

Could you have ever imagined playing for 50 years when you started out?
No. When I started out, I didn't even think about playing professionally. I just played when I was young because I really loved music. I was really bashful about getting in front of an audience. I just liked the sound of music, and that's why I learned to play it. Once I learned to play and got a chance to play banjo, they wanted me to play, and it was a nerve-wracking thing to play or sing. I eventually got over that, and I thought, well, I guess you do have to get over this if you want to play music the rest of your life. That's what happened. I'd rather play music than eat or sleep back in those days. It has worn off a little bit, but I'm 69 now. My interest has waned a little bit, but I still love to get up there and entertain people.

A hurricane hit the American Songwriter office on a recent Tuesday evening and left almost as quickly as it came. This is the only explanation we're left with after the four members of Jypsi (sisters Amber-Dawn, Scarlett and Lillie Mae and brother Frank) moved in on us for a quick recording session.

A hurricane hit the American Songwriter office on a recent Tuesday evening and left almost as quickly as it came. This is the only explanation we're left with after the four members of Jypsi (sisters Amber-Dawn, Scarlett and Lillie Mae and brother Frank) moved in on us for a quick recording session.