To use an out of date term, FOLKSONGS, more often than not were collected for their stories. The listeners were "held" by the intellectual content of those tales. If they happened to have a good tune to go along with a mesmerizing story, that was just that much the better. I rarely learned a song just for the melody---but that was just me. I've always been a word person.

We have a great old-time band in these parts called The Volo Bogtrotters. Lynn "Chirps" Smith is a huge part of what that group is. Chirps has collected fiddle tunes all over Illinois---a place many people are surprised to find them. But rural is rural---and there you will most certainly find fiddlers and banjo pickers. Most of the Bogtrotters gigs are for dances where instrumental music holds sway. That works out perfectly and it dovetails nicely not unlike yin and yang or "69" ;-) Right 'Spaw ??

When there was a viable revival of interest in story songs, even the string bands sang songs that had to be heard, comprehended, really listened to and, possibly, even reacted to with affirmation or derision or nonchalance. One could not just tap your toes to it. (Like, "I give it a ten; it was easy to dance to.")

----Then again, instrumentalist collectors of musical artifacts are intellectually drawn into and turned on by the musical complexities of their found tunes with as much excitement as I ever could generate when I found 2 verses of "Robin Hood's Death" (Child ballad # 120) in the middle of Wisconsin. It was recited for me by 89 year old, Wes Asbury---a former police chief of Whitewater, Wisconsin in his little cabin/shack on the shores of the Rock River in the town of Fort Atkinson.

So---as Pete and Ecclesiastes sang when telling us these things are all cyclical, "To everything there is a season..."

YES, you are right. The semantic aspects of Old-Timey music, in some places, are in a rut.----But right now, Singer/Songwriters in all their navel-gazing glory, are having the time of their life. I do hope they appreciate it---'cause, hopefully, it won't last too long. ;-)

Art Thieme