I like and play all kinds of music. Play jazz, some rock, some "mighty wind" type songs but when I hear folk music I keep coming back to the basic common denominator. It's simple, accessible and the songs that remain are "singable". It's not abstruse, hip, convoluted, terribly sophisticated and the plain language is what EB White talked about in how to write.

It's not a cult.

It has nothing to do with 1954.

There is no "new" folk music. That's an oxymoron.

That said, there are some pretty good songwriters out there who attempt to write in the folk style. Some do pretty well. Others stumble into the folkwhiner category.

Steve Earle and Utah Phillips carry on that good honest kind of songwriting legacy.

One of the things I've observed is that folksongs tend not to be introspective or preachy.
They state the historical "facts" of the time, accurate or not.

They are not Modrin Psychological States Of Mind which gets old pretty fast.

The tried and true songs of yesterday are still with us because they have a universal
quality to them in their themes and accessibility.

Frank