As she releases a Christmas duet with Andrea Bocelli, the bluegrass legend remembers Def Leppard videos, Whoopi Goldberg and chauffeuring her musical hero
Growing up in Illinois, I didn’t have teenage angst. My parents encouraged my brother and I to speak our minds and I remember a lot of laughs. My brother’s band would come round at lunchtime and we were always playing music, and we were goofy. We weren’t into drugs or alcohol, so for anything I did, I was completely conscious [laughs]. I was a daydreamer, though, and was fascinated by things from when my grandparents were kids. That was the appeal of bluegrass. I was always going back in time and thinking about the olden days and what they looked like. You’d listen to the songs driving across the landscape and the landscape becomes part of your daydreaming.