These days, a lot of singer/songwriter types are essentially writing and performing idosyncratic pop music, and in marketing themselves turn to calling it "folk" for a sort of pre-digested context. "Folk" is supposed to be an all-forgiving mama of sorts, benignly absorbing and handling anyone with a stringed instrument and a tendency to dress down for performances.

The recent thread about which pop songs could be trad/folk music pointed at the same issue. All kinds of schlocky recordings and third-rate songs were offered as candidates, because they are beloved songs, not because they have anything more to do with folk music than guitars and end-rhymes.

More charitably: we seem to long for a kind of inclusiveness in the definition of "folk" at times, and the acceptance of rock instrumentation feels to some people like an old battle, already won.

I went recently to the Western Regional Folk Alliance convention in Sacramento, and was present for a number of performances (onstage and off) of the current "folk" market. Pretty dispiriting, overall, unless you have an interest in singer/songwriters who have but one toe of one foot in tradition, and both eyes on becoming a feature article in No Depression magazine.

I'd say go with your gut, Rabbi Sol - I suspect that your audience doesn't come to hear rock, and a lot of the acts who are auditioning are, like the Folk Alliance crowd, struggling with a difficult marketing image. Which is not, so to speak, your cross to bear.