I dunno, Kevin:

I don't ever remember hearing someone do a Bill Staines sang, having changed the words. Or Bob Franke. Of course, when the words are slightly different, you never know whether someone consciously "rewrote" them, or just forgot them. In a way, the whole idea of rewriting songs seems foreign (but not Old Country) to me because I hardly think of myself as "writing" a song. As often as not, the song "writes" me. I don't think I've set out to write more than five or six songs in my life. The others have flown naturally out of a conversation, a phrase, a memory, good times with friends or a dream. Now, if someone was singing one of my songs in a dream, and they "rewrote" it, that would seem perfectly natural. :-)

Over here, in the 60's, everyone was abuzz because Steve Gilette wrote Darcy Farell, and people thought it was traditional. There was a little bit of Fool The Folkies" after that, with people consciously trying to write faux folk songs. I suppose that it was an interesting excercise. I'm not sure that was what Steve consciously did, but he didn't make a habit of it. First of all, folk music doesn't sell all that well, so it seems like a misguided venture.

As for the good songs lasting, that remains to be seen. I don't know many songs written in the folk idiom that I thought were better than Here's To You Rounders, and it's already slipped below the screen. The irony to me of folk music and folk singers is that most of us bring a top 40, pop mentality to songs. I've seen so many musicians who are constantly trying to come up with new songs because they think that people will get sick of listening to the old ones. Man, if that was the case, there wouldn't be any old songs. I'll probably sing Old Dan Tucker and Down on Penny's Farm until I can't let out a squeak. And, I won't "rewrite" them to make them more relevant to me. One of the GREAT joys of folk music for me (and Art Thieme would give a rousing, "I second that!" is that they are a portal to the past and other cultures. That's why I wouldn't want to rewrite them. The choice of words and phrases is precious to me, and a major part of my pleasure in singing them.

As an old friend of mine used to say when he was upset about something someone had done, "They need a sound thrashing about the head and ears!" If that was changed to "They need a smack on the side of the head." it would have the same meaning but lose all of it's humor to me. Maybe that's another thread. We could take beloved old traditional songs and rewrite them into more contemporary, proper English. I think I'd be tempted to give anyone who did that a Whup on the side of the head, if not an actual sound thrashing ABOUT the head and ears. :-)

Jerry