Interview with Ricky Skaggs

By Christian Lamitschka

CL: I’m Christian Lamitschka and today I present you Ricky Skaggs. Ricky, welcome to the show.

RS: Good to be on the show!

CL: Ricky, you are one of the Bluegrass legends in country music, how is it to be a legend?

RS: You get gray hair when you become a legend I guess. I kind of got the Elijah look going on.

CL: You have a lot of stuff going on at the moment, can you tell us a little bit about it?

RS: Yea, I have a new CD called “Mosaic” that’s gospel, spiritual, and sacred CD. It’s very different than anything I’ve ever done, but very good. I’m very proud the way it came out and it sound wonderful. Also, I’m re-releasing a record we did for Cracker Barrel, there are lots of stores and restaurants here in American. They have a big gift shop, where they have lots of records in there. We did a record for them was my “Country Hits Done Bluegrass”. They’ve had it for three years, so we’re adding some old songs done in a new way, a project that will be re-released that this year. Got a Christmas record that we’re putting out, Volume 2 Skaggs Family Record, with The Wyatts and our children. We also have a DVD from that performance from the Ryman Auditorium that’s when coming out Skaggs Family Christmas as well. The Wyatts are doing a record this year for Skaggs Family. I got a book coming out sometime in September, it’s an autobiography with my wife and so we’re pretty excited about that. Outside of the I can’t find anything to do. I’m just bored!

CL: When country music came out huge, also bluegrass music, what’s the biggest difference from the time you started your career and now.

RS: Well, lots of difference now. I think radio is different, we have the Internet now, we didn’t have that back then. I think now we can actually play to the whole world at one time, which is great I think. The CD sales are much less, but the Internet downloads are much greater. So we can make more money not having print out CD, store them, ship them, it all can go over the internet now at one time. It’s been a wonderful thing to have. I think there are a lot of people at country radio today that may not know history of country music and so they kind of know the history from Garth Brooks and forward.
Christian Lamitschka ( Ch.Lamitschka@t-online.de )
www.MySpace.com/ChristianLamitschka