I suppose another important question is: "Why should I care whether traditional/folk music sells well or not?" I mean that with all due respect to the people out there who are trying to make a living doing so, but as an amateur musician (like most of us, I'd guess) whose only venue is the backyard-barbeque-living-room-and-campfire circuit, it really means nothing to me whether hundreds of millions of people are buying this sort of music or just a handful. One of the good things about the growth of the Internet is that it is capable of catering to small, niche audiences (like us) while still remaining economically viable. I can go on-line armed with nothing more than the name "Doc Watson" and find a complete discography and order a particular recording in under a half an hour. So I'm certainly not worried that traditional/folk music will fade into oblivion just because no one working in the genre is reaching platnum sales figures. I love Dylan's quote: "There's nobody going to kill traditional music. All those songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels -- they're not going to die. It's all those paranoid people who think that someone's going to come and take away their toilet paper -- they're going to die."

And it certainly doesn't offend me that my musical tastes are not shared by zillions of other people. Matter of fact, I kinda like it that way. Ever drive down the street with the windows down and Clarence Ashley singing "Oh the coo-coo, she's a purty bird . . ."? People'll flip out on you. I don't have much in common with people who like to watch "The Jerry Springer Show", blockbuster action films, and professional wrestling -- why would I expect our musical tastes to coincide?

Why doesn't traditional/folk music sell? I don't know. But so long as I can keep finding it, learning it, and learning from it, I don't really care too much either.

Bryant