I love the thin mints Ron, I just hope they don't change the recipe & add carmel & keep calling it the same thing. (hee,Hee)

The SS & who ever else want to make a living at what they do, I have no gripe about that. I'm not even as much a stickler as Bill (pretty close though). If a preformer changes their game plan & who'll they'll target so be it. But when a radio station and festival that holds as much sway in the folk world of a city like Boston try to premote a genre of music & try to pass it off for what it ain't & try to relable it's product & redefine a genre in a city that's a hub for that genre, that's not sitting well in my gut. WUMB has been a 24/7 hr folk station for 25 yrs up untill lately & this most recent direction has moved them almost off the folk map completly. They've done the same with their festival. Are they trying to convince their followers & the city & it's enviorns of what the "NEW FOLK MUSIC" is? New & folk can live together but there's also a line somewhere as Ref says, that's maybe not a hard line but it's there somewhere & I'm not gonna have it from a festival or station that's got an a stake in the matter tell me where they think that line is. They crossed the line & they should copt to it. The past few yrs they've "BLURED" the line which could be tolerated up to a point but they're beyond that point now & they need to to called on it.
And I'm calling it,,,,,as I hear it.

This is not a folk festival, again look at where they've come from & where they are now.

It's not a matter of "is Kathy Mattea a folk singer" or "does she sing folk songs". Her new CD "Coal" is a departure from what she does & what she does is good & her "Coal" is black & hot but do you think she's gonna be doing something from a different corner of folkdom when she's in a crowd of SS like the list that's playing? It's a songwriters festival. Where are the other geners, where's the Blues, the Bluegrass, the Cajin or Zydeo, where's the Cowboy, the Western, the Mountain? They still work & sing & write about the mines, they still sail & write songs about that. Do we need to hear only from the songwriters that WON'T WRITE from, within or even near the box. If they're only singers that are writing from far outside the box, well, let them call their box something else & don't go trying to convice a city that's there's a "new kid on the block" & that we need to buy into that new kid & for go the rest at the rest's expense.

They (the premoters) are trying to sell us who love folk music a new set of goods which isn't what it appears to be.
Look I go into a store & they have been selling me beef for yrs, now they've come up with a new canned product, no more raw beef that I have to cook myself. It has the taste & flavor of beef, smells of beef, even has some of the helper stuff to make it look like beef but when I read the ingredients I find there's no beef. I go to the manager & ask why they're selling me this & calling it beef & why they're not selling any of the beef I used to buy? They say cause "it is beef", this is the "NEW BEEF".
I ask you when you look at this line up of singer songwriters "WHERE'S THE BEEF"?

Barry