As soon as you put it on stage and charge admission it stops being folk and turns into something else. That isn't to say that the something else in question is good or bad, it's just different.

To me that bad aspect of things is that when I was a kid "folk music" was generally thought of as music made by everyday people just for the hell of it. I learned to play frailing banjo and acoustic guitar from people who were willing to teach just for the love of the music.

Now we have professionals on stage, teachers who charge by the hour and the overall message running throughout every genre and subculture that falls under the general heading of folk music is that we, the common folk, are not good enough to take part in the music as anything but paying spectators.

Today folk is just a word.

-Patrick