Oh dear.

There are two threads of argument running here now, and I have tried to bite my tongue but I have to come back on both.

First there is the "You're not good enough" view. Second there is the "Don't join in unless I tell you" view which for me implies something of the first.

Now let me say that I don't believe that things are "good enough for folk". We should all (and I do) try to do as well as possible. That, surely, is in the nature of singing or playing in public. I think it is obvious that the arrival of the expression was a nice piece of British self-deprecation, a deflection, what lawyers in the 1970s would have called a "confession and avoidance".   People who think that people who say it are expressing the view that incompetence is good enough in folk music or song misread what is said - in my view. However, I do take exception to "artless" as a term of criticism. It is the essence of farouche arts and performance that they are without the artifice of high art.

I also believe that people who do not bother to try let both themselves and the genre down. This applies (amongst others) to a nearly semi-pro I know (no names no packdrill) who seems to ascribe to the school of thought that the top 4 strings of a 12 string are Bb, Bnatural, Eb and E natural, and another true semipro who has a guitar worth about 2 grand but uses strings that cost about 2 dollars a set and changes them about every 2 months - oh and a nearly semipro fiddler who "plays" when unable to stand. And people who can read dots but couldn't swing with a rope around their neck. None of that justifies telling them that they are not good enough to play or sing (although it might lead to me running away to avoid the latter). It doesn't justify shutting out singers who can't sing, or who can't memorise words, either. It is not a competition. It is not a hierarchy.

Is it bad manners to impose when you may cause discomfort by your performance - well, yes, but so is farting in public. It's not a hanging offence. Is it bad manners to tell another that they are not good enough? In my view, yes, and clearly so and worse. That (IMHO) is what stops people starting to play or sing. The former only dissuades the audience.


Now I come to the "don't join in" view. I have agonised about posting what I am about to post. I have sent it to "sensitive" friends to review for me in advance (they approve). I am desperate not (likely falsely) to say or imply that I am better than anyone else. That is something that I find offensive in others. I do what I do as well as I can - although my views as to what is better or worse may not be the same as others.

It seems to me that resticting joining in - unless there is a very gocent reason - runs the risk of excluding the most magical of moments: the tingle (or as it has been called elsewhere, "the Miskin tingle").

Now I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, in fact I'm full of insecurities and self doubt, but it seems I finally have to.

One Sweeps I hoiked my mandolin out in a singaround and a bloke said to me afterwards "How did you do that, they were original songs and you've never heard them and you knew exactly what I was about to do before I did it?"

A while before that while Jacqui was alive, we were at a sort of acoustic club, and there was a plank player there. He listened to us do our couple of songs in the first half, and then in the second he said "Can I come up with you?" We said "Well we're going to do X and Y, do you know them?" He said "I know the format". He was right (if a bit loud).

Then there was a Tenterden, and I was flying that year. One bloke (a professional) did a song in the 8 Bells in C sharp and I did quietly and tentatively look for the accompaniemnt, and damn me next time he did it he said "I did this in the 8 Bells and Richard found all the right notes" (I comment, the capo helped a lot). That time of course I screwed it up!

Same year, a different professional (an international pro) said to me as we went off on the Sunday "You're playing has been one of the highlights of the festival for me. You've never met any of these people but it sounds like you've rehearsed the songs together".

Now this is not because I am good or have any special talent. It's because if a musician listens really hard he can tell a fraction ahead of time (usually) where someone is going next in a song. Anyone can do it so long as they do not tense up (so I could not do it if put "on the spot" and stressed).

Some years before Royston and I were giving "Haul Away for Rosie" a shellacking in the Dog and Bunny in Maidstone when the Barden had a session there, and some bloke was cooking up a storm on the guitar behind us (we were in "B"). Sounded super-great, a sort of blues riff against the repeating lines in the shanty.

This serendipity is one of the greatest things about our music. Don't shut it out with egos and formalism. Please.