Here's Andy Cohen's thoughts on the subject (he's not a Mudcatter ... yet):
Jack,

I'm in Kent, Ohio. May Fourth, y'know, some things take precedence. Tell 'em this: to all intents and purposes, the same run of gigs is pursued by all parties in the Folk Biz, all unorganized in any rational way. Each performer of whatever stripe, below the level of being able successfully to play at events with some heft, like a folk festival, are stuck with a welter of bars, coffee *shops* like Starbucks, coffee *houses* like Caffe Lena, bookstores (either mom & pop or B & N), local, church basements, bar mitzvahs and weddings, and all the other jobs for hire that musicians do.

Looked at from such a class perspective- there are fewer jobs which, if you had fifty of them in a row, that would be a decent living- most of us must cobble together a unique loop. Some gigs you can repeat, and some, like the Ark, say, you can't for some time, because you are part of a very large stable that has accumulated over the years.

If we had licensure, which I'm glad we don't, some authority would be responsible for the overall balance between traditional and innovative presentation. No such luck. Willy nilly, you are a folksinger no matter what piece of it you adhere to. In forty years I have seen a shift toward songwriting from pursuit of traditional material, as the source people pass away. Youngsters emerge, and a complex arithmetic of publishing, downloading, combined with the crash of distribution and the subsequent influx of hundreds of former mainstream acts into the world where Caffe Lena and the Ark mean something. Traddies get short shrift. Without selling the place out, people who are merely good at spiritedly reproducing an old art have little value except as legitimators representing the group they study and know.

I would rather take a group of source people around, because even at their frailest, they define an obvious baseline against which the kids then have to measure up. Sadly, there are few of those from the pre-war period left to play, and so 'folk' festivals are stuck with those who study the old musics.

I don't have a solution that doesn't involve hierarchical ordering. I wish I did, for myself and others. What is important to me more than anything else is that the bedrock of our national repertoire be preserved 'in the air' as well as on Library of Congress recordings, County, Yazoo and Document.

SERFA, the new Southeastern region, holds some hope for me. The Southeast has the largest concentration of continuators in the country, as far as I can see, and the most loyalty to its own region's music.

For me, there are some false premises involved in the presentation of folk music to begin with, in dealing with the interaction between our musicians and the public: the economics that necessitate publishing and copyright as the main economic drivers, combined with what I feel is a massive overemphasis on asserting one's own 'voice'. I feel good if I can adequately represent some of the bearers of our known and collective musical heritage, our source people. I am at a loss to understand why 'originality' (mostly, recombinance in my view) is considered more artful than faithful reproduction of source material.

Andy Cohen