The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #131641 Message #2984670
Posted By: Don Firth
11-Sep-10 - 03:08 PM
Thread Name: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
Subject: RE: The Concept of FREED Folkmusic
Ralphie, your mention of Jon Boden's "Folk Song a Day" reminded me of Roger McGuinn's "Folk Den." I think McGuinn adds a song a month to the web site, but he's been at it for a few years now, so he's built up quite a list.
Roger McGuinn was lead singer and lead guitarist with The Birds (hit records with Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn" and Dylan's "Tambourine Man") and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
You can't get much more "professional" than that.
But McGuinn spent some time at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago (founded by Win Stracke and Frank Hamilton [Stringsinger here on Mudcat]) and has a genuine interest in traditional folk music. So to provide a resource for singers, he started his "Folk Den" web site, complete with his recording of the song of the month, along with the words typed out, and a bit of background information on the song.
He has also done a very good DVD on how to turn out commercial quality recordings for CDs or mp3s, using a few pieces of equipment such as a good microphone or two, a computer interface of some kind, a bit of software, and a laptop computer. I've studied the DVD, have acquired some of the equipment, and am preparing to start recording the songs I know (a few hundred).
On the DVD, McGuinn gets into such things as multi-tracking and overdubbing, which strikes me as a bit of "overproduction" on a lot of folk songs, but it's not bad to know how to do it, even though you may not want to do it yourself. Check it out.
And I'm seriously considering getting myself a web site and putting songs on it the same way Jon Boden and Roger McGuinn are.
So I would say that when you look at what's REALLY going on, the idea that "greedy professional folk singers" are trying to limit folk music and make it scarce in order to increase their massive profits is the goofy idea of some bewildered doofus who doesn't get out much.
Don Firth