It's hard to really answer that one simply because nobody ever sees the full impact of his or her life. Everything we do sets off a chain reaction in one way or another. The people you teach go on to teach other people and those second, third and fiftieth generation students know your work and feel a connection to your music even if they never get to know your - or even know that you ever existed.

My own experience with that sort of second or third party mentoring has always left me feeling a little bit dazed. It's not unusual nowadays to go somewhere and have a complete stranger walk up with a banjo and knock out my arrangement of Baltimore Fire or start frailing a bluegrass or blues lick from one of my books. It's a good feeling and a creepy feeling at the same time. Good in that it's pretty cool to think that I've managed to take the music that a handful of people shared with me to a much wider audience and creepy in that we've managed to reach more people than I ever dreamed possible.

I know that we have sold thousands of books because I have to ship the freaking things - but those same books are also freely available online under a Creative Commons license so it's impossible to say just how many people have read them. Factor in the tens of thousands of people using our podcast workshops and I just get nervous. Shoot, I started a new job last week (I'm working for Geek Squad) and on my second day one of the guys asked me out of the blue if I was the same Patrick Costello who writes open source music books.

Like I said, it's kind of creepy.

In the end, putting a book online or sitting under a tree in a park playing the banjo are just two ways of doing the same thing. Folk music really only "works" when you set it loose where people can find it. Sometimes something as simple as taking the time to teach a kid how to make an E chord can set off a chain of events that changes the world.

-Patrick