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Composed

  • “Beating Around the Bush”
  • “Out of Joint”
  • “Sailors Hornpipe”
  • “Salt Creek”

Early Influences

  • Pete Seeger
  • Weavers
  • Don Stover
  • The Lilly Brothers
  • Allen Shelton

From the Archives

The basic difference between that [melodic banjo style] and the regular Scruggs style is that the hands are working together with a much higher degree of cooperation. With the regular Scruggs style, you can play a certain right-hand pattern or roll and you can do a lot of different things with your hand… When you play chromatically, you’re pretty much playing note for note, whereas in the regular Scruggs style, it’s more apt to be lick for lick.
Quoted by Roger H. Siminoff in “Bill Keith,” Frets Magazine, March 1980.
Working with Bill Monroe – not just as an observer…trying to add something that would compliment his music, and not to contradict its aesthetics with some ill-chosen musical statement – I was editing a lot of the ideas that I had coming along and learning to play right. It’s not right or wrong, but some things are more right than others. You listen to bluegrass music enough, and you can tell.
Quoted by R. J. Kelly in “Bill Keith – Sharing a Banjo Tightrope,” Bluegrass Unlimited, January 1985.
I try to create situations where I’ll have to play or find time in the day where I can just sit down and do nothing else. It’s not the first thing that pops into my mind when I come back from a recording session or a road trip, but I usually try to play some in the morning.
Quoted by Roger H. Siminoff in “Bill Keith: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Pickin’, December 1977.
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