"Only in your opinion"
I thought about this a lot last night and something has struck my about your persistent and sometimes rather savage dismissals of my arguments Dave - you really do have a major problem - you don't like unaccompanied singing - you have said on numerous occasions that it bores you
We are talking about folk song (in Doran's case, what his over-accompaniment does to it)
Like it or not - the English, Irish and Scots traditions are unaccompanied ones and have been throughout their existence, as far as we know (Bede suggested a harp-accompanied one back in the 9th century, but that was a long, long time ago)
If you don't like or can't listen to unaccompanied singing, you cannot begin to understand British and Irish folk song - the voice is the very essence of our folk singing
That doesn't bar instrumentation, on the contrary - a sensitive accompaniment can be an asset, though never essential - the words alone have carried our folk songs for long enough to show that - our unaccompanied oral singing tradition goes back at least 1,000 years

Our songs are stories, emotions and aspirations often expressed in beautiful vernacular language that sometimes challenges the artistry of our greatest poets and playwrights - that was the first thing that struck many of us when we first encountered them
If you are going to add accompaniment to our songs then it has to be done as an addition - an aid to the communication of the words - not the distraction it all too often is
Now we have singers who follow their accompaniment rather than allowing the song to say what it has to say in simple narrative
You can see that in the phrasing of singers like Doran, Carthy and many others - the words become broken up, the narrative becomes gappy, punctuation is abandoned so that the songs no logner make narrative sense
Go though the songs and you can count where this happens
I think it was Marin Carthy I first heard doing this totally unnecessary musical interlude thingy where the narrative actually screeches to a halt to make room for an admittedly skilful but totally unnecessary musical interlude - even The Watersons didn't do that sort of thing - neither did The Coppers, who they took a great deal of inspiration from
The early revival, in my experience, understood the importance of narrative and the place of instruments, when they were used - you had the plinky plonk of the singing pullovers folk boom, but by and large, you were not distracted from the words

Over-instrumentation is, I believe, largely an English affectation - I find most Scots singers I hear (I admit I haven't hear too many of late) are proud of their poetic songs and ballads and the beautiful vernacular language adds to their power
The Irish tradition is slightly different in that many of the songs are lyrical rather than narrative, but that has led to a use of a high level of vocal ornamentation rather than instruments
Our source singers sang unaccompanied because they chose to, not because they were incapable of playing instruments - many of them were musicians too - especially in Ireland

What it boils down to is, if instruments are going to be used, they have to 'learn their place' in the order of things - they are there to accompany words and not the other way around, which has become all too often the case, a good accompaniment, for me, is one you don't notice until it stops (or maybe when it goes wrong)
As I say, if you don't like or understand unaccompanied folk songs you will never understand what the tradition is about

"How can anybody expect to have a conversation......?"
Is it really the job of a moderator to decide the nature and direction of a discussion Jeri ? hat's a new concept on me
Can I respectfully suggest that, if you can't keep up with the discussion then you leave it to those who can
"Old fogey" Jim