Any music fan who lives for the twang of the country guitar or the quick pick of the bluegrass mandolin should need no introduction to country bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs. Throughout the span of his 34-year career, Skaggs has managed to reach heights few county artists have ever known, collaborated with some of the genre’s most respected artists and earned a vault’s worth of awards in the process.

In 1996, Skaggs made the decision to shift from his illustrious career as a country musician to bluegrass. Besides simply playing the music, he has worked as a producer and founded his own label, Skaggs Family Records, all with the intention to help catapult bluegrass to a new level of popularity. Skaggs took some time between studio sessions to answer some questions for the Daily about the state of bluegrass and where he sees it going in the future.

Dante Sacomani: You were just at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s “World of Blue Grass” conference in Nashville last week. How did it go?

Ricky Skaggs: That’s the International Bluegrass Music Association, they have a trade show, a fan fest and they also have an awards show that they do on Thursday night – Alison Krauss and I hosted that. I thought it went very well. It was the first year that it was in Nashville; it’s been in Louisville and then Owensboro, Ky. before that. So I think it went real well and I think there was a lot of press, a lot of opportunities for the music that wasn’t afforded to it when it was in Louisville. I think it went real well.

DS: Did moving it to Nashville do anything else for it that Kentucky hadn’t?

RS: There’s a lot more young people now, a lot of young audience that I think were turned on to bluegrass in the last eight to 10 years. I just think there’s a whole lot more excitement about bluegrass – I mean CMT and CMC, both country music networks are playing bluegrass videos. There’s younger people involved in it, which always makes for audience participation up there – especially college-age and even high school. Kids we’re seeing are playing the music and wanting to know about it, wanting to learn how to play it and hopefully do it as a career some day. So we’re seeing a lot of young kids getting excited about the music.

DS: You typically get credited with bringing bluegrass to new audiences. What do you think has helped this revival?

RS: Well, I think one of the things is just that music has gotten so much better – the quality of the musicians, the songs, the recording quality. I think it’s all come up in the last eight to 10 years. The artwork just looks better, it’s more informative, we’re playing better places, sound systems are better – we’re just demanding to raise the bar and take the music more serious. Things like that, plus things like the movie ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ and the tour that came after that. There are just a lot of things I think have added to the popularity of bluegrass.

DS: It was about 10 years ago that you switched from country to bluegrass. What made you decide to do that?

RS: Yeah, I came back in ’96 when [bluegrass legend] Bill Monroe passed away in 1996 and started playing the music and everything. I think part of that is seeing a major country star that had a household name in country music that would come back to a music that a lot of people on music row in Nashville would think is insignificant, y’know, because of low numbers that it sells the audience members that come out to see bluegrass is not quite like the big country music festivals that have maybe 75- or 80,000 people. I think it was news when I came back and then Dolly Parton did a couple of records; Patty Loveless did a couple of records of bluegrass. There have been a lot of country artists that kind of have contributed to the promotion of bluegrass again.

DS: You keep saying you came back – do a lot of country artists get their start in bluegrass?

RS: If you can play bluegrass music, you can pretty much play anything that’s out there, any kind of music because it’s not easy to play; it’s very intricate, it’s hard to play. If you can learn to play and sing this music, I think you could pretty much do anything musically.

DS: Has having your own record label given you the opportunity to make music you couldn’t on other labels?

RS: The main thing it has given me is just the freedom to record the music that I want to do. I’ve been frowned upon or judged or scrutinized or that kind of thing – I think having my own label gives me the freedom to go do, like, this Christmas album that’s out right now with me and my family – my kids and my wife. If I had been on a major label, that would never have happened. They would have never seen that as anything significant, you know, just low numbers: ‘for $10,000 we’ll let you go ahead and do it’ [laughs].’ I know that I can’t do a record for that with the time I spend on it to make it sound as good as I want it to sound. So being able to have my own label has been able to afford me the freedom to make the kind of music that I want to make.