Frank Woerner of the Compass Rogues and New York Packet, both sea chantey groups, once described me as "a real folksinger." It wasn't necessarily meant as a compliment, but I accepted it as one and I use that term in the excerpt from my promotional blurb which follows. Pete Seeger calls himself a folksinger. So does Peggy Seeger, and so does Theodore Bikel. So did Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Haywire Mac McClintock, Cisco Houston, Leadbelly, Josh White, Aunt Molly Jackson, and Carl Sandburg. That's good enough for me!

Here's the excerpt. Please indulge my total shamelessness!

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Steve Suffet is best described as a real folksinger. His repertoire comprises a mixture of railroad songs, trucker songs, cowboy songs, union songs, old time ballads, blues, ragtime, Gospel, bluegrass, topical-political songs, and whatever else tickles his fancy. He takes songs from whatever sources he wishes and then he sings them his own way. If he forgets some of the words, he makes up his own on the spot. If he can't quite recall the tune, he takes what he can remember and reworks it to fit his vocal style, maybe flatting a 7th or changing a major key to a mountain modal. And if he can't figure out the original guitar chords, he plays whichever sound right.

One thing that Steve does not do is kowtow to the self-appointed folk police. You know the types: the ones who insist that every song be sung note for note and word for word the way so-and-so recorded it three quarters of a century ago! Another thing he does not do -- or at least very rarely does -- is sing a song the same way twice. His performances are always full of surprises: an extra phrase here, a new chorus there, a stanza added or deleted anywhere. Even his set lists are full of unexpected twists and turns. He may, for example, sing seven Woody Guthrie songs in a row and then suddenly break into Zum Gali Gali, Freiheit, or The Star of the County Down.

Steve also writes his own songs, but more often than not they are set to the tunes of traditional folksongs. Sometimes he will take a well known song, such as Reuben's Train or This Little Light of Mine, and rewrite everything but the refrain and one or two stanzas. When he is finished it is often impossible to tell where the original song leaves off and where Steve's composition begins.