Conrad:   "Performers need to plan to get off the stage put their feet in the dust and transmit a bit after every performance."

They do!   At the Berkeley Folk Festivals in the early 1960s—$15.00 for five days of workshops and concerts with people such as Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Sam Hinton, Sandy Paton, Merritt Herring, Jean Redpath, Jean Ritchie, Almeda Riddle, Joan Baez, Marais and Miranda, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, Alice Stuart, John Lomax Jr., Elizabeth Lomax Hawes, and ethnomusicologist such as Archie Green and Charles Seeger (patriarch of the Seeger family)--in addition to the workshops and concerts, I—and many others—had long, informal conversations with all of these people.

After concerts in Seattle, I've spent lots of time talking with Pete Seeger, on another occasion, Peggy Seeger. Twice with Gordon Bok. Went to after-concert parties with Joan Baez and Barbara Dane.

On two occasions, I've talked after concerts with Richard Dyer-Bennet, and he was full of good advice and encouragement. And during the Seattle World's Fair, the day after his concert, six of us had a chance to sit around and chat for about four hours with Theodore Bikel.

These people have been very generous with their time, and they are interested in what local singers are doing. Several of them asked me (and others) to sing for them, because they wanted to know what we were up to.

And I—and singing friends of mine—pass this on and are very interested in helping others.

Walt Robertson, who gave me my first guitar lessons in 1952, has told me about meeting and talking with Seeger, Dyer-Bennet, Josh White (took some guitar lessons from him), and many others, including Leadbelly and John Jacob Niles. Most of this occured when he was in college in Pennsylvania, and went to the Swarthmore Folk Festivals in the late 1940s.

So, Conrad, within my experience, what you want singers to do, they have been doing at least since well before I first picked up a guitar in 1952.

Don Firth