I have been accosted during gigs by people telling me I was doing it wrong. Three times, always by outraged purists. Perhaps some of the rudest experiences in my life. "Purist" and "folk process" aren't two concepts that go together in my mind.

I've been intrigued by someone on this thread, and some folks on other threads, who say the folk process was killed by writing things down and/or recording them. I think process is only dead if you let it be. As soon as a song in my repertoire is a couple of years removed from my source for it, the folk process has kicked in with lots of little changes. A lot of musicians make changes -- sometimes conscious and sometimes not -- to their material, and always have. This is part of where all those variants come from, and I don't see that process stopping.

I often look at written music like a road map. It's great to give you an idea of where you are going, but when you're actually driving you need to have your eyes on the road, not on the map.