Songwriter/folk can they overlap?

Subject: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bert
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 02:31 PM

This is not a thread about what is or what isn't folk.

It's a positive thread. I want you to honestly find modern songs that you consider could, maybe, classed as folk songs.

What I have in mind is songs like this

Or even heaven forbid this.

All you purists who think that there are NONE, OK, I'll agree, you may be right. But this is an effort to bridge the gap between singer/songwriters and folkies. So see what you can come up with.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Naemanson
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 02:42 PM

I don't know how to answer this without a definition of folk music. Could you provide a blueclicky to one of the threads that beat that particular dead horse?

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bert
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 03:03 PM

Hey Naemanson, just use your own definition. Do you consider ANY modern songs to be folk songs? If so, name some.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Gary T
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 03:15 PM

Define modern.

I think of a lot of Ian & Sylvia's and Gordon Lightfoot's songs as folk music, or for the purists, "folky" music. I don't have any very recent examples at the front of my mind, but I know they're out there.

The two examples you showed, Bert, are parodies (one of a genuine folk song, the other of a folky song). I assume that's just coincidence--you're not thinking only of parodies?

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: GUEST,Phil Cooper
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 03:21 PM

Dear Bert,

I think the singer/songwriter stuff and the trad can co-exist. I am firmly in the trad oriented camp, but know many contemporary songs that really knock the proverbial socks off. At the Folk Alliance,I think there is way too much us vs.them mentality. We probaby get more requests to do Huw William's Rosemary's Sister than we get to sing Lang a growing, so the audience does not care as much as some of us performers. I tend to like newer songs that act like they have a nodding aquaintance with traditional songs. I'd like to see more cooperation between the two facets of the folk world. Thanks, Phil

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bert
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 03:22 PM

I was thinking that 'the parody' is a folk process. Not the only thing by any means just a starting point for a discussion. By all means give us some more.

One of Gordon Lightfoot's that could be considered is "Old Dan's Records". Not a parody, but the idea for the song seems to come from Old Dan Tucker. The lineage and continuity is there. It may not survive but for now it's folky, if not folk.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Midchuck
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 03:33 PM

Tom Russell
Ian Tyson
Utah Phillips
John Prine
Guy Clark

And, formerly

Stan Rogers
Jim Ringer
Steve Goodman.

All write, or wrote, songs that feel to me like folk songs, albeit that they aren't, and are a more polished product than you get from the folk process. To me, there's a real contrast between these guys and the hordes of young singer-songwriters "singing their diaries." I don't know why all of them are male...Maybe Kate Wolf too....

I assume there are others in other countries that affect people in their own countries the same way.

Just my subjective reaction.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Gary T
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 03:49 PM

A few examples that I would consider modern folk music:

Canadian Railroad Trilogy (Gordon Lightfoot)

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot)

Short Grass (Ian & Sylvia)

Lonely Girls (Ian & Sylvia)

The French Girl (Ian & Sylvia)

Cedartown, Georgia (Waylon Jennings)

Kaliga (Hank Williams)

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Naemanson
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 04:02 PM

Assuming you mean "Traditional" and "Traditional Style" when you say "Folk" I would have to say there are quite a few. We have all heard stories of new songs being thought of as traditional. Roseville Fair is one such song. It has been recorded and listed as traditional but Bill Staines should be getting the royalties.

So I guess you would have to list many of the songs by Gordon Bok, Bill Staines, and the like.

Perhaps a rough delineation would be the personal nature of the songs. Singer/Songwriter stuff tends to reduce the story and rely more on a description of some strong emotions.

My own definition of "Folk" includes any song sung by the common folk in the ordinary run of the day. Thanks to the influences of radio and TV peole tend not to make much music for themselves but the music they sing with on those electronic devices might be considered FOLK. It just ain't what we consider FOLK. I have spent many a nice evening with friends playing Moody Blues, Beatles, Led Zepplin, Springsteen, and even, God help us, Neil Young, on acoustic guitars with everyone singing along. Is that not folk?

I'd say it is but it isn't "Traditional", or "Traditional Style" and that kicks it out of my realm of music these days. Yet there was a time when that was my music.

I guess what I'm getting at is that maybe your question should be "I want you to honestly find modern songs that you consider could, maybe, classed as 'Traditional', or 'Traditional Style' songs."

BTW, it's nice to see a positive thread. Anyone want in on a virtual pool to see how long it takes for this topic to get flamed or trolled? Or does that take it into the realm of negativity?

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bert
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 04:39 PM

Naemanson,

'My' definition of folk is very similar to yours but it is not the most widely held view. Traditional; will do fine for the purposes of this thread. And songs like Roseville fair are just what I'm looking for.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Jed at Work
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 04:58 PM

bert - if you dig out the CD ("Streets of Fall River") I sent to Max, there is a song called Return to Loch Moy that I believe fits exactly what you are looking for. It is in a traditional style, and refers to a famous and fabled battle. Listen to the song and see if you agree.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bert
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 05:00 PM

OK, I'll see if I can find that in time for Mudcat Radio Tomorrow. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 05:20 PM

I think someone you may find general agreement on Bert might be Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. They are most certainly trad/folk and the new material which they write has a strong trad influence.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Naemanson
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 05:26 PM

Oh, and many of the songs by Eileen McGann, esp. The Knight Of The Rose.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Jed at Work
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 05:27 PM

Well bert, I'd be honored if you'd play it on the radio show tomorrow, but that wasn't why I brought it up.

Actually, I purposely tried to write a song that fit an old English melody and chord progression - and one that used the Battle of Culloden as a back drop. I also wanted to put a diferent twist on the theme, that being one that uses history (and geography) only as a backdrop, but told the tale of two lovers saying "OK, battle's over, we lost, but who cares, let's just get back into each other's arms and get on with our life/love!" I found an old folk song with a similar theme, and used some of its imagery.

Anyway - I hope you like the song, (by the way, it was written for a four part vocal on the chorus) ... and I suspect you'll agree that it fits your criteria for original "folk" songs.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Downeast Bob
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 05:33 PM

How about Woody Guthrie? To me, that's modern because he was writing songs in my lifetime and I consider most of them folk songs because they sound like folk songs. Examples: Pretty Boy Floyd, The Reuben James, Great Grand Coulee Dam -- lots of others.

I think what makes a song a folk song is whether ordinary people are still singing it long after everyone's forgotten who wrote it. By my own definition, most of Woody's songs aren't folk songs YET but I spect they will be. So will a lot of songs by Hank Williams, the Delmore Brothers and lots of early country singers.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 05:58 PM

sure, Bert...even by MY standards some things written in the last few years 'feel' like folk songs...(subject matter, style, tune,..etc.)...these are what get called "in the tradition" until they achieve enough age and/or oral transmission to settle into the repetoire like Woody's have..or Bruce Phillips' are beginning to.. (even Tom Paxton..)

besides Bruce Phillips & Eric Bogle and a few more, my favorite example is Craig Johnson..(Art Thieme recorded several of Craig's)..2 of his are in the Digitrad..(well, 3..but one is a silly parody)....but several of his best have NOT been recorded yet that I know of...one totally fooled me the first time I heard it..

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Terry Allan Hall
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 06:11 PM

I sure hope so...I'm too old to get a REAL job!

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Mark Clark
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 06:42 PM

Bert, I sure liked the examples you cited in your first post. I think I agree with you; that is I think commercially composed music has a way of working its way into the "folk" designation over time. It can work both ways. Is Copeland's Apalachian Spring classical or folk? The hoedown part at least is mostly made from "folk airs."

I think our community is plagued by (at least) two separate definitions for folk and we don't always announce which definition we're using when speaking casually. I'm guessing that there is an academic definition to be found in a university library somewhere. That definition is probably restrictive enough to allow formal theses to be judged for academic merit and excludes a lot of the music we all play. A second definition was created by the DJs and A&R men of the 1960's. That definition described often rather polished singing to the accompanyment of unamplified stringed instruments. The source of the material wasn't an issue, it was the "feel" the music was given. There may have been an intermediate definition in the 1950's.

In a sense we are now combining those definitions in a very positive way. When we say "folk" most of us, like Bert, tend to mean music that is commonly shared by private folks on a non-commercial (as it turns out) basis that is most often sung to the accompanyment of unamplified instruments. It has become the music folks like to hear and perform, played on the instruments they have. Come to think of it, maybe that's what it always was.

Nice definition, Bert.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 06:52 PM

Song for Ireland, The Holy ground, Witch of the Westmerlands... Dylan, Ochs, McCutcheon, Lightfoot, Christy Moore, Dougie MacLean's great songs, Silly Wizards....etc.
It is my belief that 'folk' is an artifical tag.
Traditional is also a bit loose, because it ends up being a term annalogous to HALL OF FAME...
I think we have a great deal to say about what music is considered trad, by playing what you enjoy. Let the test of time be the Judge, not the opinionated bastard sitting next to ya...
Also, we tend to think of folk music as acoustic, words oriented and/or dance, by dead people, and of a specific form that we can judge, critique, and cubbyhole.
The living part of folk is often forgotten,... that songs are being written right now that will be considered Folk in years to come... And these songs will inevitably be accompanied by Two or Three thousand that will be forgotten... How can we possibly know? Look for what will be interesting in 50 or 100 years... As for now, music written in the folk idiom will do,... but quality and timelessness are intangible to us...
Perhaps those who study trad songs will find the key,...But it is definately true that those who only listen to the trends and the sexys, or the SS who speaks for a particular gender, relationship, generation, period of time, etc.... will tend to produce for the time being, or for money, fame, and hormones...

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From:
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 07:37 PM

Most of the songs of Dave Stone, Cape Breton songwriter now living in Halifax. Check some of his songs at Dave's Journey

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Naemanson
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 07:37 PM

Thomas, I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say, "Traditional... ends up being a term annalogous to HALL OF FAME..."

Could you please explain?

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 08:06 PM

O.K.,... Uhm, I er ah,... well?,...

To me the Iconish quality, Museum display, textbook variety of "folk music" is a necessary evil. We often take the form to be exact, which it often isn't, and in doing so I would say that the fumbling essence of the music is lost. Handed down, refined, smoothed, and shaped to perfection, these songs are often not even close to the origionals, and may have the touch of many composers.

What I am getting at here is this; there is a living and breathing aspect to traditions that we often get snooty about. Starting a new song, or heaven forbid, changing an old one, is not quite acceptable. This is silly. The essence of traditional is not classical. Classical worships the form, to the exclusion of the artist, and I'm just not certain this is an accurate description of folk/traditional music. When the folk musician performs, personality and interpretation are part of the show, and discussion too. Personal feelings are shared.... ITS ALIVE!

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Paul G.
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 09:47 PM

Steve Gillette's "Darcy Farrow" Almost anything performed by Brendan Nolan (does celtic count?)

p.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: GUEST,Joerg
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 10:10 PM

The difference between folk music and the whole rest is that folk music is ALIVE. Trying to 'protect' it by forbidding new things to be added is like sterilizing or even castrating it. Forbidding it to breed is like killing it. Hehe - trying to kill it - you won't succeed.

What we call folk music is the music that has survived, while 'non-folk' music has died. Of course the surviving (=folk) music isn't new, it takes some time to wait until all concurrents are dead.

So I think it's wrong to consider a new (recently written) song to be folk or not. Just wait 50 years and then see what's happened to it. Will it still be a 'piece of music' which must be performed some special 'correct' boring way or will it have grown to a real 'song' being performed in thousands of different versions where each of them is new and interesting? THAT's folk.

And the only thing that needs protection is having the guts to perform a song you like YOUR! OWN! way.

;-)

Joerg

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: campfire
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 11:59 PM

Okay, so I stand in the singer/songwriter camp anyway, but, from my point of view, the people who wrote the "folk songs" that we call "folk songs" were the singer/songwriters of their day.

I'm sure Woody Guthrie wrote a few songs that even he'd like to forget. Those are the ones we don't know - they didn't "take".

Your first post, Bert, was a parody of a Tom Paxton song. So can the song it was parodied from classify as a folksong? I would say it is.

People above have mentioned other singer/songwriters and I would agree. Not ALL of John Prine's songs, for example, - but certainly SOME of them.

I would add to the list:

Cheryl Wheeler Cosy Sheridan LJ Booth TR Ritchie Brooks Williams Greg Brown David Wilcox

and probably others I'm not thinking of right now.

And yes, there are certainly singer/songwriters I would leave OFF such a list. I won't name them here, and I don't go see them twice. Now I'll duck....

campfire

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Lox
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 02:05 AM

Add to the list

Ron Kavana John Renbourne Attila the Stockbroker The pogues McDermotts Two Hours Robin Hitchcock

...gnnnnnn...goddammit I can't remember.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: campfire
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 02:09 AM

Ooops, Lox, looks like we both forgot our line breaks!

campfire

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Naemanson
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 08:54 AM

I have to agree with Thomas that "folk" music cannot be restricted or even written down and locked into a form. Thus, if the song is, say, a chanty about going home to New York and the singer chooses to make it going home to Hackensack then that is traditional and is "folk".

If, however, the song is about how you feel about your father who had polio (Abbe Anderson), there is no way to personalize that song and fit it to your own cicumstnces without telling the audience in your intro how it applies to you or them or whatever. That is singer/songerwriter stuff and could be considered folk but not traditional or traditional style. It's good music, even great music, but it ain't traditional.

So here is a corollary to the original thread. What is the quality or composition, the essence if you will, that makes a song a traditional style song. Why does Roseville Fair seem like it is old as the hills? Why doesn't some of the music fit that label?

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:02 PM

Songs can be powerful, magical, and new
They can sound like others but go where none do
When the words apply to yesterday, and the chords do it too
Then you've got the time travel thing, "traditional and true".

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 02:38 PM

Naemanson:

Roseville Fair seems old because it IS!...10 years ago or so, I heard it playing over the speakers at a woodshop where I worked..I stopped and stared and asked the youngsters there.."What is THAT doing on your pop/rock station?"

They said that it is a pretty popular song by.."(I forget"....so I tried to explain that it was closely based on a song that was several hundred years old. They refused to believe me until I brought in a book and proved it...

Traditional style folk has usually simpler tunes, includes subject matter that is more 'about' people, the world, magic, food, animals, ships etc., can be gratuitously silly....there are 10-20 characteristics one could list that 75-80% (or more)of the songs in the database seems to tend towards. Not every 'folk/trad' song has all of them, but you get a 'feel' after awhile...Soon you can say, well, this bunch definately IS...that bunch is NOT...and here is a group that is on the fence.

Again..it is not a matter of good or bad. Dick Greenhaus said it... "FOLK IS NOT A VALUE JUDGEMENT" ...but when the word was applied it was supposed to MEAN something. It no longer does unless you are in a group that has an agreement about it. That is not so here...some simply state that 'folk' means 'X' to them. Not a lot you can say after that.....

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Bert
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 03:00 PM

Bill, you said "That is not so here...some simply state that 'folk' means 'X' to them.". All I can say is 'OOPS!' I say that don't I?

Actually, I think that we need a word to describe the songs that people are singing now. Those songs that are being sung at sings and circles around the world. I like to think of that as folk music, but of course it's not really. It's not Pop either, so just what should we call it?

Bert.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Naemanson
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 05:02 PM

Are you saying BillD that Staines based Roseville Fair on another song? Do you have more about that? I'd like to know more because that song is a favoriite of mine and I enjoy seeing the proto-genesis of such things. Do you still have the book?

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: GUEST,John Leeder
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 10:26 PM

Just back from holidays, and coming in late on the discussion.

There are many traditions which accept new compositions written within the tradition. Certainly I'd include English-language Canada among them. Also the blues, to choose a wildly different example. I don't think the idea that "if you know the author, it's not valid" is accepted very widely any more. I would argue, though, that a composition has to be *within the tradition* to be traditional, to belabour the obvious. A song which has not been subjected to oral transmission, variation, and the other touchstones, may exist within a performing or composition ethic which has been worked on by those processes. Sorry to sound pedantic, but I can't think of snappier language at this point.

I think the best folk songwriters can innovate without losing touch with the tradition. However, people who innovate so much that they lose touch run the risk of no longer being folk songwriters, thus starting to make big bucks as mainstream writers...

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 10:39 PM

Yes. They can and do overlap, and they always will.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Áine
Date: 29 Aug 00 - 11:23 PM

Every single song ever written by Kevin McGrath. 'Nuff said.

-- Áine

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 12:30 PM

I can't quite remember this guys name, but he wrote "Sink the Bismark", "North to Alaska", "Tennessee Stud", "Battle of New Orleans" and a bunch more. All of these songs were written for commercial purposes (movie scores, in some cases) but have a timeless quality and tell a good story.

Also, consider Felice and Boudelaux Bryant who wrote so many tunes for the Everley Brothers and others.

Also John D. Loudermilk

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 12:51 PM

The folk process is a process is a process is a process. "the tradition" is the workings of that process by which a folksong can (and often is) created. In folk music there is no such thing as a career move. But sometimes one can earn money singing traditional folksongs.

Love,

Art

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Jim the Bart
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 12:52 PM

Re: my last post

The guy's name is Jimmy Driftwood. Sorry 'bout the brain cramp.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Midchuck
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 02:42 PM

I don't think Jimmie Driftwood wrote "North to Alaska" or "Sink the Bismark," although he definitely wrote "Tennessee Stud" and "The Battle of New Orleans" (lyrics of the latter, anyway - the tune is a trad. fiddle tune, "The Eighth of January" - which was the date of the aforesaid battle). The common thread is that all of them except Tennessee Stud were recorded, and made into country hits, by Johnny Horton (he may have recorded Tennessee Stud too, but I'm not aware of it).

I'm always amused about the battle of New Orleans, because it's the only battle of the War of 1812 that U. S. school students hear about in history classes, because it was virtually the only one we won. And it was fought after the truce papers had been signed, but before the word got down there. Refer to the thread on "MacDonnell on the Heights."

Also re singer-songwriters with a true folk feel, refer to my tantrum of today's date on the "badman ballads" thread.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Songwriter/folk can they overlap?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 30 Aug 00 - 03:40 PM

Woody Guthrie wrote for commercial purposes. So did Robert Johnson, Pete Seeger, and a whole host of other "folkies". That definition doesn't hold up any better than most of the others I've read. But I promised myself I wouldn't get into another of these debates, so I'll just toss in that little firecracker and step back into the shadows before the bigger bombshells start falling.

We've all got our own traditions, whether they're hundreds of years old or much more recent. The world sped up a lot in the 20th century, and just like everything else, traditions are born and die a lot quicker these days than they used to. And we all have a right to use words (like "folk") as we see fit, whether or not the self-appointed experts approve. As I mentioned before, language itself is a folk tradition, and nobody on this forum can legitimately claim ownership of it.