I'm with Jeri, Don and Mary on this one. You have to understand what you're dealing with before you interfere with it on purpose. Never forget that the song is more important than the performer.

As for deliberately "hacking apart and throwing back together" a traditional song: that isn't the much misunderstood "folk process". It's the self-conscious editorial re-making of traditional material to suit prejudice or preconception that the early 20th century collectors and publishers like Cecil Sharp and Sabine Baring-Gould are so often attacked for. It smacks of arrogance and, all too often, ignorance.

Re-interpretation and mis-interpretation are not the same thing; nor are they of equal value. It is equally unwise to confuse the natural process of evolution, with all its inevitable dead-ends (the "folk process", if you will), with deliberate genetic manipulation; which tends to produce unnatural results, even if (because consciously manipulated) they may appear superior at first sight.