'So how does this tradition thing work?'

Some interesting questions there, Al...

'Does someone say to you, by gum! you're a traditional singer?'

No-one ever said that to me - I just concentrated on the stuff I enjoyed the most, and then got asked to do gigs playing it. Like Dick, I would use 'traditional singer' to mean the kind of singer who had their songs handed down to them as part of the natural flow of things, rather than people like me, who set out to learn them in a folk revival setting.

'Do you guys feel differently to us who who play all kinds of stuff?'

Probably not. I played for many years in a band doing Americana of various stripes, and formed a mid-life-crisis rock'n'roll band for a while as well. The task is always to develop the material in a way that makes it an interesting challenge for the musician, and entertaining for the audience. My job description has always been 'professional entertainer', rather than 'keeper of the flame'.

'And more importantly - do you really feel its made for a good working basis.'

Musically yes - I never got bored with arranging trad. songs in different ways. Career-wise it's kept me going for 40 years and taken me to a lot of interesting places. Developing the educational / workshop side has been useful in terms of career - trad. fans may be a niche audience, but they are keen and often participatory.

'But I've always been a mongrel - picking up guitar riffs and songs here there and everywhere.'

Many of us (instrumentalists especially) possess that instinct, and I've played all kinds of different stuff in my solo set, never mind in bands. Peter Bellamy (himself a handy bottleneck guitarist) once told me that his approach was 'anything goes for the encore', but that he preferred to keep the trad' stuff as the core of his set.

'Has the idea of 'the tradition' worked for you. Has it made the best out of you as a musician and artist?'

I like to think so. Arranging old stuff for new audiences was, for me, always a more interesting challenge than writing my own songs (I did write a few, many years ago). And, though I can get a thrill from a falsetto bluegrass harmony or a rock'n'roll accordion break, nothing matches the intensity of a blood-and-guts Child ballad! I would also say that, for someone with my musical predelictions, folk gigs at which people actually listen to what you're doing are a great spur to musical development.

'And does it seem worth handing onto a next generation.'

That is a great question. My impression is that there was a great crusading spirit around in the 1960s, and it was still there among many of the pros and organisers when I started playing in the 1980s. People like Bellamy and Martin Carthy would always be telling you to look up Sam Larner or Harry Cox's version of this or that, and my old pal Roy Harris was truly passionate about a sense of mission. I did use to think that 'handing it on' was a sacred duty, but I don't so much now. There are plenty of talented young singers and musicians (some of whom even admit to listening to my old records) and they're well capable of finding things out for themselves without some crusty oldster telling them what they ought to do. Performing folk songs in an accessible style, while keeping the source material available to anyone who wants to pick up on it, would be enough for me.