Big Al -- the evidence on YouTube proves, to me at least, that you certainly are a folk singer. Your renditions of Raglan Road, Peggy Gordon, and Arthur McBride give you solid cred, and the fact that you play them in a (sort of) Mississippi folk-blues style makes them interesting and original arrangements. Just the thing that's needed to keep them out of the museums, and plenty relevant to folk music.

On my last trip to Ireland, I hooked up with Jim Carroll and his lovely wife, and we had a very enlightening conversation. I refrained from giving them one of my CDs, realizing it would not be to their liking. But it's a broad world out there, and the purpose and power of music is to give people pleasure. So we don't all like the same things, but what of it? That fact does not diminish the worth of any of our musical endeavors.

Sod the naysayers, eh?