Words and labels are necessary to define what we're talking about. To often, they end up dividing people. A few years ago, I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article about The Last Folksinger. Let's face it, folks, we're all revivalists. How many of us have skinned a woodchuck? or gone down to the cider mill to have a little nip? Been a railroad engineer recently, or seen any train wrecks? Too often when I've told people I am a folksinger (not being a stickler for terminology myself... and I do a lot of traditional folk in a traditional style) they say, "What is folk music?" They're not looking for a two hundred response thread at Mudcat. They have no idea what I am talking about. We're not doing our job, folks! Traditional folk music isn't "ours." Traditional songs can speak to the guy who commutes into New York City every day and wears $200 wing-tip shoes.

A few years ago, I was playing Forked Deer (badly) of fiddle, and someone came up to me, very incensed. He was angry because I was playing it in a different key than everyone else does. I was playing it in the key that I was, because it was the only key I could play it in. He said, "Nobody plays Forked Deer in D".. or whatever key I was playing it in. I said, "they do, now."

Folk music should be FUN. If we just keep taking the music out to our rapidly diminishing audience, we will become preservations. For all the obvious lacks of the Kingston Trio, they brought a lot of people to folk music because it looked like it would be fun to play. Were they folksingers?