Frank,

I took one lesson from you (group) before you joined the Weavers. "Singin' In The Country" is what we were workin' on. It was way over my head then, but later I got it right.

Leo Kotke's brother, Francis, wrote the Star Spangled Banner"!!! ;-)

Rick & all,

I suspect your right more than I am. Sandy too--even though Sandy & my taste in music pretty much coincides. Lately, I've been getting more used to bein' wrong than I was once. Strange to realize all of that at such a late date. My testostrionic (just made up that word) youth, with all of it's certainty and vehimence, was spent probably being delusional where things things folkie were concerned---things that seemed so correct then. Vladimer Posner, the former actual spokesman for the USSR in America, wrote a wonderful book called __Parting With Illusions__ that I highly recommend. He grew up in America & moved to the Soviet Union. Some of the professed muical tastes on the folk scene were the result of a political agenda. We all see that now, to an extent at least, even though we failed to see any validity to that way of seeing things back then.

Now to Bob Gibson: He became a friend after first having been a hero of mine and a musical mentor. He and John Hartford and Pete & many others did amazing benefits for us when our health went to hell, and I'll always appreciate their frienship and their help. But Bob was someone, if you were to get out his world alive, you had to keep somewhat at arms length. If you went too far into his world you hit bottom too and wound up way into the drugs. He was not only a user of drugs but, even after he mostly quit, he became an expert user of people. That often happened with adictive personalities. It was how some managed to survive their terrible dark years. Those able to stay mostly clean in that era did it by keeping the music in the foreground. They might've romanticized the lifestyle, but partook with moderation. That must've been part genetic, part luck, part fear and part smarts that kept one safe during those glittering and glowing nightlife, smokedream times. I've mentioned an evening with Johnny Cash in the 60s when Freddy Holstein and I literally ran into J.C. and ran all over Chicago showing him off into the wee small hours---from bar to club and back to bar again. Grand music and some pretty sad moments too. All great memories in retrospect, but there was a time I had to break it off and head home and rest if I was to be true to my own inner voice. But so very many didn't live through those mesmerizing music scene years in Chicago. And for the life o' me, I don't know how Mr. Gibson managed to do it unless it was with a ton of help from his friends who truly got all used up in the process of saving Bob. All I really know is that it was the place to be then. I'm glad I was there. The music became my life and Bob Gibson sure is in my music. I never copied him exactly, but I can sure hear him in my records. We put him on a pedastal in Chicago, even if his feet did turn to clay.

Art