I also know that I am not a great technician.

They are missing a component that is very important and should be one of the skill sets for the 21st century that every kid has when they graduate from high school.

Well I was on the one hand, the more I played the guitar the more I began to really love the guitar and to love virtually any kind of music that anybody played well on...

So what I do is this – when I go to the venue, I become the entertainer John Fahey.

Well folks, that’s about it for the show tonight.

More American young people can tell you where an island that the ‘Survivor’ TV series came from is located than can identify Afghanistan or Iraq. Ironically a TV show seems more real or at least...

Well when I made my first record I thought it would be a good joke to have me on one side, have the lable say John Fahey on one side, and this guy Blind Joe...

While I recognize in the back of my mind that I am an occasionally brilliant guitar composer and arranger, innovator and player.

Regarding fame, fortune and Oregon I do wish I had more money.

So when people ask me how good I am, I usually cop to being brilliant, even better than that, but short of genius.

So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don’t know why.

So I was really composing for full orchestra and of course I didn’t know enough chords or harmonies yet but I came up with some interesting stuff.

I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.

In the music I was composing I was trying to express my emotions, my so called negative emotions, which were depression, anger and so forth.

A sound knowledge of geography is essential for understanding global events and their impact on the rest of the world. National Geographic has always recognized the need for geographic literacy and will vigorously continue its...

I’m not sure how important it is that young adults can find Afghanistan on a map. But … that is symptomatic of the bigger issue, and that’s (U.S. young adults) not having a sense that...

See my father knew a lot about music, he played the piano and he would do theory and stuff like that, but I didn’t learn anything from him, but I played that for him and...

Most musicians I know cannot open up.

As soon as the groupie finds out that you make errors in everyday life like everybody else does and that you are human, they turn on you and hate you.

I do not even laugh at this like others do because the relationship between entertainers and groupies is pathological.

As for fame, it can go to your head and you can become full of yourself.

Everybody else was just trying to copy folk musicians, I wasn’t trying to do that.

Early Bluegrass is my favorite kind of music, not to many people know that.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am playing emotions and expressing them in a coherent public language called music.

Being worshipped is a horrible experience.

We’ll buy over 800,000 gallons of diesel fuel so every rise in cost is a major issue for us.

But I say these things in an objective dispassionate manner because, you know, and I can’t explain why, but being one of the greatest guitarists in the world simply is not very important to me.

But when I come off stage, I do not want adulation, I do not want to be worshipped.

How can I be a folk? I’m from the suburbs you know.

We’re trying to find ways for our kids to give back to the community, give back to the school, … We’re also really working on giving them the work they can take with them way...

When I play, I very quickly put myself into a light hypnotic trance and compose while playing, drawing directly from the emotions.

Oh, 1962. The music scene was so bad that several of us decided to come out to Berkeley and take over the folk music scene here.

I just want to be treated like an average guy.

As for the source of the music, I believe it comes from the unconscious; that there is no such thing as talent.

The other thing in composition is opening up the unconscious.

They are too focused on the audience rather than on their own emotions, or they are too focused on technique or perhaps on both.

I was using them as teachers for technique but I was never trying to be a folk.

Someone once said that war is God’s way of teaching geography, but today, apparently war or even the threat of war cannot adequately teach geography,

From a social perspective, I am looking for friends, not acolytes.

I know many inferior guitarists who are very proud of the fact that they are as good as they are, when in fact they are only moderately good.

I thought I’d be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don’t forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.

Geographic illiteracy impacts our economic well-being, our relationships with other nations and the environment, and isolates us from the world.