We disagree about a lot of things here at Mudcat. Some of us, for example, feel that only unaccompanied vocal music is pristine enough to be considered "folk," while at the other extreme, some of us accept garage-band punk-rock as a contemporary folk-music form because it is a personal musical expression of a contemporary societal group.

On the other hand, there are a few basic principles that pretty much all of us can agree upon ~ one one of them is that ANY music conceived and performed for the expressed purpose of appealing to a particular audience is very likely NOT the kind of music we're interested in. We like music whose creators play and sing for their own enjoyment and that of like-minded members of their own community ~ mass-media reaction be damned!

I'd advise you to worry much less about the "image" of folk fans and folk culture that you see promulgated in the media. Who cares? If "they" fail to understand, too bad for them!

The music has its own irresistable appeal, something that a few folks will recognize and love right away, that others will gradually find more and more appealing, and that still others will never understand.

Just worry about yourself, keep the beard and the belly nicely trimmed if you're sensistive to ridicule, and sit back and enjoy.