LOL, Jody!....somehow, I doubt you're gonna cancel that next gig because some younger curmudgeon (a sprightly 62) has an obsession with categories. (And I'd hate it if you did!)

Fact is, even 'folk singer' doesn't do justice to what you seem to do, and I expect I'd enjoy hearing you. All that category stuff is interesting to me, but when I decide what to sing, I don't run an analysis on it first, and I song lots of stuff that I don't CALL folk/trad music.

If I were to try making a living at it, I suppose I'd call myself a singer of music "in the traditions"...that is 'mostly' related to folk.....and if someone pressed me, I'd declare that not all of what I do IS folk.

My only real point is, calling yourself something doesn't magically make anything you do 'folk'. If you did "The Toreador Song", "La Donna E Mobile", "Mein liebster Freund" by Mozart, "Ritorna vincitor", from Aïde, and several more of that ilk and only a couple like "Home on the Range" and "One Meatball", people would consider you an Opera singer with strange habits, and insisting you were a folk singer would be pointless.

It seems like MOST of what you do is folk, so I'll not dispute that it is a useful label...but LOTS of people out there are doing stuff that is NOT, and using 'folk' to describe themselves...and when I pay money to hear them, I get frustrated, because that's not what I expected.

I belong to the "Folklore Society of Greater Washington", and it gets REAL interesting when I go to a concert and find 75% of the songs were written in the last 5 years, in a style and with subject matter I don't care for! They may be very good musicians and quite popular, but I can FIND singer/songwriter and pop/rock music everywhere...I wa't a tiny little corner where the older stuff is done in a more traditional way......*grin*...and it is hard to find!

So....*shrug*..everyone should sing what they want, but when they advertise it, tell me the TRUTH about what it is!