GGS asks: "Is it inevitable that roots and trad music when it is popularised, becomes commercialised in the sense that its original form alters to cater for a popular taste, and thus metamorphises into something further from its roots?"

I reckon a lot of these songs were once popular. Then they because unpopular. In terms of wider culture they remain unpopular. Every now and again one slips through the net and becomes popular again. This is what we're trying to do with Spencer the Rover by the Woodbine & Ivy Band, which you can listen to on Soundcloud and judge for yourself: we'll plead guilty m'lud to trying to interest a non-folk audience as much as we're trying to interest a folk audience. Although it shares a tune with the Copper Family version, the arrangement - featuring a full band including bass, drums, guitar, pedal steel, trumpet, piano and a 12 piece choir - is contemporary folk rock (though it wears an abiding love of 1972 on its sleeve!).

Any arrangement that isn't purely about unaccompanied singing is a metamorphisis of some sort. Most of the old songs that are still sung have metamorphisised into a late 20th/early 21st century folk scene style of one variety or another - a 'sort of' commercialisation in that it's about making the song palatable to that audience. I think that unless we are conciously trying to mimic the approach of the old countrymen and women we know from field recordings, we will inevitably change how the songs are presented. And that's fine.

I guess the commercialisation comes into play if we are also trying to make some sort of a living from doing so - and I think this is only a (possible) problem if energy is expended trying to dream up a sure fire hit-making formula (a process usually doomed to failure), rather than simply doing what feels right. With The Woodbine & Ivy Band, above, many of the members have played rock, indie, jazz, country, improv and all sorts of different music, so those influences are inevitably going to seep in when they play a folk song.