The more morbid a song, the more I like it(not the only songs I like, but they have a special place in my heart) and I think the audiences I have sung for tend to feel that way too--after all, is not our culture at large, addicted to stories of sad, tortured lives and tawdry, pathetic, deaths? Jon-Benet Ramsey and Chandra Levy could be the subjects of Child Ballads--

I don't perform anymore, but I am sure that, in the wake of 9/11, audiences are still hungry for something real, and evocative of the pain that they feel--it is better the subject is indirect, that is, another building on fire, somewhere far away, or another daddy that isn't coming home--

I am partial to things like, "The Unquiet Grave" "Little Bessie"(a child is dying of the fever, and the angels are calling her name) and all the young man dying of a horrible disease songs, and of course the standards, like "Barbara Allen", "The Banks of the Ohio", "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?", and of course, the surprise hit of 2001, "O, Death!"