Abigail Washburn

“I would still describe China as a vast, invigorating puzzle that will never make sense to my western upbringing.”

“My parents played the radio, but music was never an obsession or something that I thought I could call a career.”

“You have to try things you're really afraid of, even if you pee yourself a little bit.”

“I feel like the one insight that's extremely comforting to me about the world is that we all share the same pool of emotion that we draw from.”

“I believe in the old, because it shows us where we come from - where our souls have risen from. And I believe in the new, because it gives us the opportunity to create who we are becoming.”

“I have a general sense of mission, and I intuitively know when something is influencing that mission. I think this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Doors keep opening. In the end, it's the best use of my skills. I've finally consented to the idea that I'm an artist.”

“I was born in Evanston, Illinois. I spent my elementary and part of my junior high school years in a D.C. suburb. And then I spent my high school years in Minnesota. And then I spent my college years in Colorado. And then I spent some time living in China. And then I spent three years in Vermont before moving down to Nashville.”

“I've noticed that the more I open up, the more I learn.”

“China was the first time I truly felt like an outsider. I fell in love with the process of trying to become intimate with the culture.”

“In China, I realized that if you visit often enough and learn the language, you will be assimilated, but you'll still be kept at arm's length; you'll always be looked on as a foreigner.”

“One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.”

“You can enjoy many different types of music. I think that's something more Americans should think about.”

“I feel like my kind of music is a big pot of different spices. It's a soup with all kinds of ingredients in it.”

“I do get around. Geographically, that is.”

“One of my favorite albums in the world is Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska.' Each song has this very distinct character who has something profound to say.”

“Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea.”

“For most Americans, my Chinese music feels like a novelty, and it's not what it is for me.”

“I had no intention of becoming a performer, and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold. If divine powers hadn't intervened, I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law.”

“I played piano and was always in the choir. I tried to play flute because all the pretty girls played flute.”

“My whole drive is to make sure that music is a common space where we search for beauty and share it. It needs to be louder than any conversation. That's where we have to go as a human race.”