I think the Folk Degree Course is one of the ultimate conceits of The Folk Revival, and is essential Steamfolk. How can it be otherwise? This doesn't mean the results aren't amazing - I've been to performances by Folk Degree students and just basked in the glory of it all, but it's total Steamfolk, whatever the underlying academic / cultural gloss might be. These days that become increasingly evident as Universities become even less of an option for people on the whole, let alone the population of Tyneside. After all, all you need to play nu-metal is the chops; folk was never just chops and the same is true today. Folk is a myth predicated on a Bourgeouis Fantasy of working class culture; most Folk music is still couched in these terms even unto today. I call it psuedo academic because it is a very closed unit, and their methods are far from falsifiable, much less their conclusions, which are more akin to Religion than Science.

I'm not complaing BTW - that's just the way it is - the Folk Reality - which has given us so much truly amazing music over the years & continues to do so, but then again so has Roman Catholicism, but one doesn't have to become a Roman Catholic Covert or agree with one word of the inane Theology of same to appreciate the mastery of the first Vivaldi Gloria (much better than the second), much less the transcedent beauty of the Allegri Miserere. In fact it probably helps if you don't, which is what Steamfolk is about - being able to see this stuff for what it is without throwing out the babies with the bathwater. In fact, it keeps the bathwater too (whiter than the whitewash on the wall!) as an essential component of a very modern cultural phenomenon which is still expressing itself in those terms - as it does in the new (very excellent!) CDs by Jim Causley and John Kirkpatrick, both of which are unashamedly Steamfolk in that sense.

As I suggested in my review of the former for Stirrings: ...there is a sense here that the new generation of Folkies (of whom Jim Causley is particularly bright star) are using the idiom in a way which post-modern irony serves as a more genuine sort of subversion, however so innocently innocuous this music might otherwise sound. Hey, maybe that's the nub of Steamfolk right there?