A couple of years ago. And one of the reasons is because of my love and my family’s love for “Appalachian Spring.” There are certain pieces that capture a time and an emotion, and sometimes it’s only classical music that can do that. And there’s just nothing like “Appalachian Spring.” I thought, “That’s like our family’s national anthem. And wouldn’t it be nice if we, as a family, could leave something behind to the country, too?” I’ve worked with every kind of genre of musician over the last 15 years, and it’s been everything from punk to jazz to klezmer. But the truth is we all love classical music in my family. We were raised with it. And I realize how inconceivable that is to a lot of people. They all imagine that we were at home listening to Leadbelly in our jeans, picking our guitars. And it’s true.

But we also went to the opera, and all of us were trained in piano and clarinet and flute, classical guitar, and we have a very, very deep love of classical music in our family. Our mother would put us to sleep with “Songs of the Auvergne” (by Canteloube). We were raised on all the Gilbert and Sullivan works, all the opera, real opera, all the classical, Bach, Beethoven, the whole thing. And to this day, it’s always Bach in the morning. I don’t care what anybody says. I woke up to Bach. My kids wake up to Bach. Arlo’s kids wake up to Bach.

and later…

In our house, it was not unforgivable to go from that to the old blues songs, like “Grizzly Bear,” to the soundtrack to the musical “Fiorello.” We were all over the place. We really learned to hear a good melody, I tell you.

-Nora Guthrie (RTWT)