Amen, Ron.

I always thought this was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation--if you do too well at it, everyone says you've sold out. If you DON'T do well, you can't make a living (if that's what you want to do--and I don't see why there's anything wrong with that). A lot of the people I've seen named here as Non Sell-Outs are professional musicians, not coal miners, waitresses, and truckers singing on the side the way Dock Boggs and Hazel Dickens were for so long (if you consider them "real" folk singers).

I listen to "classic country" in the car in the mornings and evenings and it has its share of saccharine garbage, but it doesn't take long to be able to tell which artists are which--nobody else sounds like Tanya Tucker or Dwight Yoakam. Whether or not you consider them sell-outs, they are certainly distinctive and very different from what is playing currently. I don't do modern country. I know there are good songs in with the rest of them, I just don't want that much pop sound with my twang.

I don't really think folk music has sold out, I just think that what could still be considered folk music flies under the radar, as it always has. I guess a lot of it depends on what you consider folk music but I really don't want to start that up again here. I think it HAS to be progressive.

I just went to see Paul Geremia (who is blues, but, eh--near enough), who has definitely not sold out. He still does the old stuff and he's learned some new stuff and he's written some new stuff, a lot of it political or at least topical. He knows a lot about what he's playing and from what it is descended, and he's old enough that he knew some of the "real" folk and blues musicians in their later years. I don't think writing your own songs boots you out of the folk category--all of them were "written" by somebody at some point, even if it's been lost to history.

As to being the "real thing". I think it just goes in circles. I played in a string band in college (fewer than 10 years ago) and we played old stuff and new stuff and new stuff that sounded old, and I don't care what anyone says--it was all folk music. The town did a charity bluegrass concert twice a year and that was all folk music, too. Semi-professional, semi-local talent. A lot of them did covers of new songs in arrangements that were entirely their own (somebody did a cover of "Delta Dawn" that was way better than the original). They were good bands, not hacks, but they had a good time and they really loved what they were doing.