When I lived in Missoula, Montana in the early '80's, a banjo picker bicycling across the country, Mike Marker by name, stopped off for breakfast at the Old Town Cafe. He asked if there were any folksingers in town and was referred to me. He tracked me down in the crumbling old hotel where I roomed at the time. He told me that he wanted to play a couple of tunes, and while we were playing told me how he found me. He said that whoever referred him to me called me a "Purist". Which made me laugh, I'm an eclectic, I play a wide variety of vernacular music; blues, fiddle tunes, cowboy and hobo songs, contemporary tunes, I even have been known to write a song or tune myself. I think the folks who told him about me confused "Purist" with musical integrity. I never understood making music just for the sake of a greasy buck, playing the hits to get jobs in the low dives and saloons that constituted the majority of jobs in that area at the time. Like Dave Van Ronk used to say, "I can tell a lie, but I can't sing one."


Mark Ross