I heard Richard Thompson last Saturday, the first time I heard him with an electric band. He played a few songs purely acoustically, but he played a few protesty songs from the new album that would be folk if played acoustically.
(He was great as usual, of course.)
I love that song. I think the thing that makes it rock is the beat. I’d say it’s 50/50 - rolling rock beat but totally traditional lyrics, and fiddles.
Folk Music is still alive and well and kicking, though to a much smaller audience.
Folk Music is suppose to be intimate. Not played to huge crowds. That’s one element Dylan took away from it.
I loves me some Joan Baez and Tom Paxton.
I consider Richard Farina one of the most talented, crazy people who ever lived, and was very saddened by his sudden death. He was sort of an Irish/Cuban Kinky Friedman, the best friend of Tom Pynchon (they traded best man duties), married to Mimi Baez, and was a published author. His book Been Down So Very Long It Looks Like Up to me was mad into a movie starring a very young Richard Gere, and his other book A Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone was made into a musical starring a very young Raul Julia. Farina was a master of the dulcimer and recorded some very good music, including the folk classic “Pack Up Your Sorrows.” Who else did that in such a very short time?
I might argue that the commercial success of folk with The Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and Mary (and others of their ilk) was doomed to die because, well, it sucked ass.
I dig me some folk. It’s been my main thing for several years as I’ve moved past rock and alternative and such. But so many of those commercially successful folk acts were just cover bands in disguise. The ones who were truly great did a lot of their own songwriting and turned traditional music into their own. Joan Baez did it. Joni Mithcell did it. Loudon Wainwright STILL does it. Christine Lavin does it. It’s just a fringe genre like Blues or Celtic or whatnot.
I’d also take issue with the definition that ‘folk’ music is limited to acoustic performances. While it’s true that a lot of it (and most of what I like) is one person with guitar or piano I’d say that folk music is more about the personalization of performance and the song type and structure than any particular instrument or arrangement.
For a prolific and great husband and wife team try Nancy and Norman Blake. Norman Blake teams up with other people at times. He’s the one with the great talent.
Folk music died? Nobody told me*.
Hardcore folkie, here. I’m more a fan of the grittier stuff, like say, Peter Bellamy, John Prine and Dave Van Ronk, but I don’t think Peter, Paul and Mary rang the death knell for folk music because of mediocity. They were polished and commercial, sure, but they had great appeal and some of their songs [Early Morning Rain, A Soulin’, Jane, Jane] are, well, really good.
*Actually, Martin Mull did.
What about Simon and Garfunkel? They may not be 100% folk but that is a big part of it and they have the 33rd best selling album of all time and can still sell out big venues.
Voyager: Yeah, I know all that stuff. Still, the timing of Dylan’s going electric was certainly convenient. And I’ve never bought the “couldn’t afford a band” line. In fact, taking anything Dylan says without quite a few grains of salt is not recommended at any time.
I would have preferred to not talk about Dylan at all in my post, because he’s Dylan, and generalizations don’t fit. But he’s kind of a 500-pound canary.
My first life folk music experience was Sand Mountain Coffee House in Houston, owned by John Carrick & his mother. At that time, John was in San Francisco–from whence he’d sent an interesting record. So, between sets, we listened to the very folky folk-rock of the Pre-Grace-Slick Jefferson Airplane. Townes van Zandt & Guy Clark played there at the very beginning of their careers. Jerry Jeff Walker introduced a new tune just before leaving for DC to join a Folk Rock band–“Mr Bojangles.” (He came back to Texas in time for Cosmic Cowboy days.)
Houston had (& still has) its own branch of the Lomax family. And bluesmen like Lightnin’ Hopkins & Mance Lipscomb played at local venues like The Old Quarter. They also played at Liberty Hall–a hippie music hall featuring a wide variety of music. Ramblin’ Jack rambled by. Taj Mahal did a solo acoustic show. Clifton Chenier’s Hot Band rocked the place several times; maybe he didn’t play what the very pale folks up in Greenwich Village & Cambridge called “folk”–but he was damned real.
Anderson Fair is still open, although the schedule is much sparser than back in the 70’s. Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett & Lucinda Williams began there. And The Cypress Swamp Stompers played wonderful bluegrass (& Irish & Gypsy Jazz).
Folk singers? Bluesmen? (& Blues Women–Bonnie Raitt played her slide at Liberty Hall.) Songsters? Singer-Songwriters? Folk Rockers? Country Rockers? Roots Rockers? Alt-Country Hipsters?
The Folk Music Phenomenon of the early 60’s was a phase. But the music goes on. (Fuck categories.)
Yes, Peter, Paul & Mary sang awfully sweet. But I liked The Holy Modal Rounders, too. Why limit yourself?
Bridget_Burke: Unfortunately, unless I’m missing something, Houston is seems to be crap for folk music these days, and has been for many years. The Fair doesn’t even try anymore, and the Duck, while fairly eclectic, books very little actual folk music. Old Town used to have some, and may still, but it’s such a haul.
Do you know any good places that are extant?
You’re right about the current Houston scene.
Many years ago Anderson Fair was open every night–with folk, bluegrass & a bit of original rock. And “beginners” like Lyle Lovett played for tips at lunch. But the proprieters are older now & have serious day jobs. Thus the sparse schedule. (And there’s a bit too much reverence for The Good Old Days–which were not sedate.)
I *like * the “eclectic” stuff at the Duck.
The Old Quarter in Galveston is run by an owner of the long-ago Old Quarter at Congress & Austin. Another long haul, though.
A young & energetic type might check out the various “open mikes” in town. But I’m one of those oldsters with a day job, too.
Dang, The Houston Folklore Society is still going! You might pay a visit to see what’s up in town. And I might even check it out.
sigh, i miss harry chapin.
I think the beginning of the end was when the Kingston Trio recorded Charlie on the M.T.A.
It’s amazing that folk music ever enjoyed any wide popular success. It’s still there, but it’s just not a force in mainstream popular music, that’s all.
Go here, download “Government on Horseback,” and give it a listen. It’s a rather humorous song that Si Kahn wrote and sang about Ronald Reagan in the early '80s. Dunno what folk is doing nowadays, but it was still alive and kicking then.
I’m with you, here. I don’t even like the term folk anymore - since it seems to imply in many strict definitions that it can only be traditional music, done the traditional way.
I prefer acoustic tradition, but that’s just my own label, and I have no idea whether anyone else uses the term. But even then, I’ll get into a lot of music that’s got too much rock or other influences to be accepted by the purists.
Boiled in Lead, Great Big Sea, and others seem to me to be at least as much folk as they are anything else.
Then, too, there’s the fact that once something starts to sell well, it gets reclassified into some other genre than folk, no matter where it was originally marketed. Christine Lavin is listed as being “pop” as often as not when I rip her CDs and get information from the Gracenote DB. Trout Fishing in America is country, or children’s. Even when it’s not one of their compilations of children’s music.
I don’t know what ‘folkies’ consider folk to be, but I looked into the scene as such recently and it looks like what little audience it has is being splintered, as indicated by the terminology:
Dark Folk
Dark Ritual Folk
Dark/Neo-Folk
Psychadelic Folk
Neo-Classical Folk
Apocalyptic Folk
I don’t know from any of this crap. I like Child Ballads, Cowboy Song, Irish Drinking Songs, Children’s Songs, Sea Shanties, Bawdy Songs, Civil War Tunes, Train Songs, Prison Chants, Murder Ballads, Worker’s Rights Protest Songs, Coal Miner’s Protest Songs and The Smothers Brothers. At this point, I’m not sure any of that is even considered folk anymore. If something killed folk, it keeps sprouting heads, but I don’t even recognize it now.
Annie-Xmas writes:
> His book Been Down So Very Long It Looks Like Up to me was mad into a movie
> starring a very young Richard Gere . . .
It starred Barry Primus. It came out in 1971. Richard Gere didn’t get his first role in a movie until two years later.
I have a friend who’s an ethnomusicologist and we once talked about the term “folk.” She kind of came to the conclusion that once something is recorded and distributed en masse commercially it’s no longer really folk–it’s pop. Folk is what the folk do: sing songs at home and at informal get togethers, and pass those songs on in person to others. Folk is not so much any particular style as a way of doing music, she said. After all, all cultures have folk music (Italian, South African, Peruvian, Korean), but their music doesn’t sound anything like Woody Guthrie. Yes, we have recordings of people like that, but it gets recorded for different reasons.
I pointed out that, in that case, rap was originally folk, and she agreed.
But the “60s folk music” that everyone thinks of (or at least those of us who weren’t around then and only know it on CD or downloads) was all commercial, and those artists were riding trends, which changed at that time, from what I’ve heard. There were a lot of things happening: the Brits were feeding the U.S. its own music in a new package; recording technology was advancing greatly; Elvis joined the army; and the social unrest that had previously concerned only Blacks was spreading to others. Dylan’s shift to electric was probably a combination of his general penchant for trying new things and seeing the writing on the wall. And he probably just liked it.
To say folk is dead is like saying punk is dead. They all linger, and re-emerge all the time.
I don’t buy it on the grounds that you can distinguish between commercial music that is Death Metal from commercial music that is Folk. Commercialism is not a sufficient condition for non-folkness. Furthermore, while people who are interested in Tom Dooley may also be similarly interested in Stavin Chain, and the tradition of Stavin Chain spawened rap music, that does not mean that you can’t perceive a significant difference between the tradition that grew out of murder ballads and that which grew out of the old toasts, despite common influences.
There is a similarity, and there is a certain irony in the way music at one point split along artificial and somewhat political lines between ‘race music’ and ‘hillbilly.’ Those who listen to the older stuff are not particularly surprised to find Leadbelly doing old Irish tunes, or the same songs being performed as ‘country’ here or as ‘blues’ there. And the audiences for folk want to hear both, and they want to hear it on commercial records as well as from Alan Lomax’s recordings or from some hillbilly’s porch or from some delta juke joint.
The funny thing is that Peter, Paul and Mary were assembled by Albert Goldman, and they were as fake as the Monkees.