Jon Bartlett & Rika,

I sure am glad to have your CDs and cassettes over the years. Great music --- and fine documents. Thanks for all your collecting.

Personally, I solved the problem of "always seeking and needing new material" by not seeking the new things being written by the modern songwriters. I was quite careful to sing only those modern songs that reflected the traditional ballads and songs. ----- I RESISTED learning the things that were merely clever but far removed from my story-loving ballad sensitivities. I'd created a musical gestalt---a museum. It was an antique shop! I couldn't have lived with myself if I had put a plastic table for sale in the window of my shop.

My "compromise" to show biz was to USE folk tales, humor, and jokelore on a given topic to set up, enhance, make a context for, and introduce the songs. Even, on occasion, in the middle of songs, I would insert a quip to bring the audience back to the relevance of the old song to what was going down right then in our modern era! I got the reputation of not doing the same show twice even when the songs were rarely jettisoned from the repertory.

I never wanted to sacrifice the songs. I cared too much about them! They were my dug-out fossils. I'm sure that some people got tired of my often repeated songs like "State Of Illinois" -- but I was never tired of them. I solved this by playing for diverse audiences on Mississippi River boats 5 moths a year and every other day. New audiences every day to win over with the historic patter so they'd see the actual value of the songs better.

The audiences changed. So I changed how I showed those songs to the people--and their differences! Age differences, ethnic, cultural, geographical differences.

This is WHY I never could accept the re-definitions!!! My definitions didn't change.

If, indeed, as we say here in this thread, the definitions have changed now, I am glad I am ill and can't participate in our music. I plan to exit this life holding to these ideals about our folk music.

Art Thieme