Oh, for crying out loud!

Neil Young might be a folk singer if he was ever heard to sing a folk song, which he might do somewhere other than the public eye. But from what I've heard, and I think it's just about everything he's recorded commercially, he's really a singer/songwriter in the pop (including rock) genre. That he (sometimes) plays acoustic and sings doesn't make him "folk". To my ears he doesn't even write in a folk style, meaning traditional, though as previously noted he has written some good protest variety songs which might squeak into the folk definition for some. I don't sense that his song structures are folkie, even if his image appears to some to be folkie. I also don't sense that he attempts to continue a tradition other than his own songs.

None of this is bad, and to me much of it is good, but it ain't folk. I had the peculiar privilege of playing in a NY tribute band for a couple of years and nobody ever called it folk. Neil Young is no more folk than, say, the Rolling Stones more acoustic efforts like Let It Bleed or Beggar's Banquet (two of my favourite records, btw).

Is NY a folkie, as in a listener/follower/collector/etc of folk music? Don't know, but I hope so, because he, like we, can learn from it. Is he influenced by folk music in any way? You betcha.

Peace, Mooh.