Well darn ! I thought folk music was a joint venture - before the age of commercial folk. Then and oddly now the typical audience (especialy female - think it has something to do with feminine intuition) will attempt to make the music 'move' by clapping on the 'up' beat. That generally falls on the '2nd' and '4th' beat. Really silly example 'Boil em down'. I assume the readers here are familiar with this phenomenon. In anycase a good audience can keep it going and if the musicians are worth a darn they can go with it - but if they are tooo snootie they will try to correct the unfortunate audience. grrrrrrr Notice too that military music IS downbeat - marching off to war HOHO - a male thing - also found at J. Birch pickenicks LOL 'John brown's Body' is a good example here. Comments about weird time sigs reminds me of a guitar student I had, he would not or could not let the darn thing ring after strumming a chord. LET THE MUSIC SOUND for heavens sake. Two very nasty things cause misunderstandings about timing. 1 The Digital Liar. Electronic tuners. Every stringed instrument I ever had tuned to a maximum resonance a little over or short of concert (tuning fork). If the instrument is not in tune with itself IT CANNOT ring properly. So the up beat is ugly because the sound is full of discord!! No wonder the listener is confused - maybe they are clapping to drown out the ugly sound ?? I recently accompanied a friend on their Yamaha Guitar which COULD not ring at concert he had guess what ...an electronic tuner grrrrrr- this is very common in my experience! So we poked around and found it settled at a little below :) The response was entirely different and so sweet even if played out of time, pleasing. Moral 'tune the INSTRUMENT' use your ears not a meter!! 2 Blueintheface from missing the beat(read whole darn point of a phrase) Misheard -so misplayed- folk (Go listen to Earl Scruggs AGAIN) Bluegrass - tooo much of it !! Nobody these days has the foggiest idea how to play Red River Valley without 'bluegrassing it' Again grrrrrrr. Syncopation - etc -

finaly Odd time sigs. If accompanied with arpeggio then the vast majority of audiences will just listen BUT tune the darn Guitar before you try this one (Tip get a Bob Dylan record and find a track in G then tune your G chord to that) Hope that helps