With all due respect:

Once again, this in-your-face, I'm-more-sociologically-correct-than-thou, confrontation/conversation never would've happened or been a problem some few short years ago. For those of us who were there then, this discourse simply wasn't relevant, then, and doesn't matter now.

Folks, things is-what-is! We will be dead and gone soon enough!! Then you can warp and re-write history all you want---to your heart's content. The photos and the music will have been saved and archived for the edification of all who care to find the stuff we cared so much about. It was a wondrous privilege and mission to sing the found gems on the byways of the U.S.A.---and an exhilarating treasure hunt of discovery where we spent our glorious youthful energies striving to put the gestalt together.

In the meantime, the FOLK ALLIANCE will be giving their most prestigious award to ROUNDER RECORDS at their 2008 convention in Memphis, Tennessee! Why??? For keeping so much of the saved material available for everyone in this strange new millennium...

Personally, I need to thank the many, many people and concert makers, and club owners, and radio stations who recorded my music through all the years, and handed me copies of the tapes they'd made. And they usually did it without permission from me because it just wasn't thought to be necessary!

Art Thieme