You don’t have to ask Ricky Skaggs many questions to get the stories flowing. Skaggs one of bluegrass music’s living legends, is a generous, earnest, philosophical soul. Earlier today, he was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Bluegrass Hall of Fame for his lifetime of work in the genre.

Before he was an award-winning musician, the East Kentucky fiddler Santford Kelly left a deep and lasting mark on Skaggs. Ahead of his performance tonight with Kentucky Thunder at IBMA’s Wide Open Bluegrass, he caught up with us about wells of creativity, of music as a healing power, and following our own unique path.

RICKY SKAGGS: My dad played guitar with Santford Kelly since he was in his twenties—Santford was the old fiddler in that Eastern Kentucky area that could really play good. I didn’t start playing fiddle until I was about thirteen. Dad was always really good about knowing times and seasons, and he just knew that he wanted me to get in front of some of these old fathers.

When I met Santford, I’d been playing for maybe a year. He came to our house one Sunday afternoon, unannounced. Back in the hills, you never called people, or told them you was coming to see them—you just showed up. It’s the way of the mountains.

He didn’t drive, so his son brought him over. He looked like he was seven feet tall, very tall and skinny and had these overalls and they were way short for him—especially when he sat down, you know—they would come up so you could see the top of his socks, his old legs just shining. But man, when he played that fiddle, there was sounds that came out of that that I had never heard before. They grabbed my heart—no, they went beyond, deeper than my heart, they went into my spirit, and they woke up that spirit, of where I was from, where my ancestors came from. 

Something ancient?

Yeah—it just woke that up in my heart. For some people who have never heard the style that we play, I think that they’re thinking that we just beamed down from another planet somewhere. That’s kind of what I thought had happened to Santford, that this man had just come from (somewhere else). I’m in a time warp now, where am I exactly, you know. 

He was playing this shuffle. I learned how to do some of the stuff that he did, that bow thing with his right hand — and when I play it for young fiddlers they go wild — saying, what is that ?

Santford Kelly changed my world, gave the idea of going back instead of forward— back to the source. I realized there was a well of creativity — and that well is still there, you know, that people don’t realize, and don’t know.

When Ralph (Stanley)’s brother Carter died, Ralph went back to the creativity well and started drinking from that well again, and really re-invented who Ralph Stanley was. Him and Carter, they always had a mountain sound, they had overt influences, obviously—they were trying to sell records—trying to come up with something that is unique to yourself, something that will help sell records. 

But when Carter died, Ralph went back to the mountains, and he dug in deep—all of the gospel things, the Primitive Baptist things he learned as a kid, he started bringing them back to the forefront. Even when I joined the band, we were learning “Gloryland” and “Old Village Churchyard,” and Ralph would be like the pastor, lining out the song. This is part of that mountain heritage, this world is just passing it by, they don’t realize how much life, how much energy is in there. If we just open ourselves up to that old stuff—it’s there. People love it.

Being a part of the old music, and the idea that the creativity comes from something really old, some bigger power — and sometimes i feel like there’s a conflict — a lot of modern creativity is about the idea of being unique to yourself, creating your own name or your own brand. Do you think of those as different things ? The way you talked about the old music—it feels like a communal creativity, there’s something humble about it to me.

There really is something humble about it. Here’s the way I feel: if god created the heavens and the earth, and with all my heart I believe he did—are we supposed to be an original or are we supposed to be a copy? 

So I think there’s something in every person — because there never will be, there never has been, another person like you. Like snowflakes—no snowflake is like another. You are the most unique person on the face of the earth, because there is only one of you that’s just like you, that has your fingerprint, that has your DNA, that has everything that you have. You are special to god because he created you that way. We are originals. We should be. 

So I think when we realize that, it allows us to be original in our love of music, in our playing ability. That doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from the elders, or that we can’t learn from the young people. I’m learning stuff from Mike and Jake and Dennis, and all those guys in my band all the time.

Do you have any particular philosophies about listening, or realizations about how to be a good listener as it applies to hearing and playing music?

My youngest daughter is over in North Carolina, and she teaches at a ministry school over there, she has students that come from all over. The teaching program is about getting Jesus out of your head and into your heart, your spirit, to not just think your belief, but literally having him live and be a part of our creative nature and allowing him to show us stuff through his creativity, through all he has created.

My daughter teaches people how to listen to music—she’ll play them something and say, “I want you to listen to it, and as you’re listing, just write down what comes to your mind, write down what you see, what you feel, what you sense. We’ll talk about it, we can all ask questions about it.”

I honestly believe that music is a language, you know—a heavenly language. There are scriptural references about battles in Israel, and they’d send the musicians out first. And the music would confuse the enemy. I think of that in our modern day lives. I know there’s a lot of modern day religions that would say there is no enemies, there is no dark side, but it doesn’t look that way to me. I see there’s a lot of darkness—I believe that music is light. I think it can play it in a dark way, but I do believe that there is light, and there is hope—all of that is love, there are so many attributes of god in this music. I know it. 

There are people that are so moved by the music—times with my band, where the music, the lyrics, have moved people to tears. They’re emotions that you don’t necessarily feel as you’re singing them, but you see the receiving end. 

You see the people come up to the record table after its over with and say, “Oh my god, I just started bawling.” You just have to be in a place where you’re able to talk to these people, and not worry that there’s a big long line behind that. You just give them the time and talk them through that, and say, “Tell me what you feel,” and really try to help them along. That music was medicine—it’s bringing some healing to our heart. There’s part of all of our hearts that’s been wounded. God didn’t do that, but he wants to offer the medication for it. It can heal a broken heart, it can heal wounds.