Hmmm....interesting thread.

I play "old-time" music on fiddle with clawhammer player, and consider that "folk music", and I'm fascinated by the way the old-timers used to play it in old recordings, but if you read old interviews of them, they often made up their own styles around tunes that had been passed to them, or many tunes that have bled into the fiddle tune list are not that old really, even if they sound that way. Or "old" Appalachian gospel songs, etc.

I also am a singer songwriter type...who plays an acoustic guitar, but when I'm wearing that hat I say I play "acoustic pop" or "singer songwriter", I would not sell myself at that point as a "folk artist".

I do call myself a "folk" performer when playing in my string band or my old-time clawhammer/fiddle combo.

You could more narrowly define "traditional folk" perhaps, and should, but just plain "folk" is always going to have a mushy, generic kind of definition to a broader audience.

It's such a mix too....I'm thinking of Joel Mabus, who writes his own excellent songs, but yet plays "traditional" numbers with great care and skill along with his own material.

But it is *really* too bad that "traditional folk" and old-time music are vanishing from "folk" venues in place of jazz-influenced singer songwriter types. I don't dislike such stuff, but I really love old string bands like the Fuzzy Mountain String band and such and I know there are tons of good groups out there that play such music and they rarely get booked anymore it seems in favor of the more pop/jazz-oriented singer songwriter types.

My .02 cents

Steve B