Other's mileage may vary, but to me, putting several instrumental breaks into a narrative ballad tends to interrupt and delay the story, which, in a ballad, is the primary element.

As to low tolerance for the unaccompanied voice, the first time I heard that kind of singing live was at the 1960 Berkeley Folk Festival and the singer was Ewan MacColl. He came out on stage carrying a straight-back chair, straddled the chair backwards with his elbows leaning on the back of the chair, cupped a hand behind his ear (not finger in his ear) and proceeded to sing a whole string of ballads—solo, unaccompanied voice.

Although I had heard several of them before, I felt like this was the first time I had really heard them!

Bare, raw narrative. The story, unaccompanied, unadorned, with no distractions!

Out of a repertoire of a few hundred songs, I only sing about a half-dozen without accompaniment. But when I learn a new song, I sing it many times through without accompaniment, deciding how I want to deliver each line, then practice it for anywhere from several days to several weeks before I pick up the guitar to work out an accompaniment. Then, I make sure that my guitar accompaniment musically supports and enhances the song and does not distract from it. I frequently start the guitar accompaniment with a brief "quotation" of part of the melody (but rarely playing a whole verse), then into a straightforward pattern as I begin to sing, often using arpeggiated chords, while not just playing bass notes at random, but trying to avoid playing the same note that I'm singing, but a note that harmonize with my voice. Between verses, rarely do I play an entire verse melody. If anything, another brief quotation or variation of the melody, not always repeating the same thing. Too much repetition can become a distraction.

But everything that goes into the accompaniment is like—cooking with spices. You can ruin a fine meal if you overpower it with herbs and spices.

There are some songs where the guitar accompaniment is pretty much the whole point of the song (e.g., "Freight Train," "Railroad Bill," a number of others), giving the guitarist a chance to show off a bit of finger-blurring razzle-dazzle. But I feel that kind of approach is definitely not appropriate for all songs, and most definitely not when the song has a strong narrative line, like a ballad. All too often, "hot" guitarists try too hard to show just how hot they are, and the song vanishes in a shower of fireworks. Whenever I want to do that sort of thing, I drop in on a meeting of the Seattle Classic Guitar Society.

I recall a time in 1960 while sitting in a music store that specialized in folk music, talking with another fairly avid singer-guitarist. We blathered on for some time about this and that finger-picking technique, chord sequences, and such. The proprietor of the store, a pretty good fiddle-player, brought us up short with a very good question. One that I think every singer of folk songs who also plays an accompanying instrument ought to ask himself or herself.

"Do you guys consider yourselves to be primarily singers? Or guitarists?"

I thought about that question a lot, and decided that, although I'm a pretty good guitarist, I am primarily a singer. The important element is the song.

Who do I think does good accompaniments, particularly for ballads? Well, I haven't listened to her much lately, since her Dylan period and since she when into the singer-songwriter thing, but when she was quite young and doing lots of ballads, I thought Joan Baez's guitar accompaniments were adept and quite tasty. They accompanied the songs and supported them musically, but didn't overpower them.

Geordie.   Simple, straightforward, and tasteful. But don't be deceived by the simplicity. I've heard her really lay into her guitar on some songs and she knows her way around a fingerboard!

Don Firth