I ain't done
I got more bones to pick & more axes to grind.

I'm gonna use you Deb C as an example, hope you don't mind but you'll help to make my point.

Deb & others don't get bill at certian "Folk" venuse cause they don't write songs!!!
She & performers like her are "conduits of folk", they are a pipeline!
Now I've seen & heard Deb many times from around a living room to concerts stage, to coffee house setting. She's good, very good. So she doesn't write contemporary songs,,,,,,,,but she picks them like fruit from a hosts of trees with the heart of migrant worker. She uses her personnal tastes to chose them, maybe with input from others sometimes I don't know. She performes those songs & to me it seems that her audiences loves what she picks & does. They sing right along or are listening intently on the edge of their chairs & it's a full applause when she's done, weither it's traditional or contemporary. So it should behove the folk premoter to hire her on because it seems that she's got something that makes her bettter able to judge what "folk songs" her contemporary writers have written that the lovers of folk music want to hear. If she's picked out a song from one of those that the Boston FF is presenting I'm more apt to want to hear that singer if Deb sings her songs than what the fest premoter says about the songwriter. If Deb chooses a song to preform, she knows after awhile if it's a keeper or not, she has the sounding board that others don't, she also has the knack & hunch of what's good. If she errored in a choice of a song, she knows when to drop it, even if she loves to sing it. She is not the one who makes the final choice but she is one of the ones who has the gift & talent to bring it out & showcase it to the community. You kill off preformers like her & you eventually kill off the very songwriters that you're trying to support, it is preformers like her that will give good songwriters the exposure they deserve. It's fine for the SS to showcase their baggage but if others aren't gonna run with it they might as well be pissing into the wind, cause if others aren't gonna run with it, it's a sure bet it's not good enough.

Thanks Deb for my use of you, please forgive me (I did enjoy myself though, Hee,Hee).

Barry