Standing Bear thanks for the thread. You sound like you have the Old Time String Band Music book published by the New Lost City Ramblers. I do too. Great book. Folk music is hard to pin down, I think, because it's a living thing, not a dead animal for dissection or mounting like a specimen of insect. It must include the sea shanteys and the weaving songs and the delta blues and the cowboy ballads and broadside ballads and field hollars and on and on and it's growing and shrinking and changing all the time. it's in the mouth of crab shuckers on the Eastern Shore and fisherman in Puget Sound. Well you know, its all the people making all their music while they work and play and fall in love and out, and dance and fight and give birth.

regards, chance