An audience of one? Myself? Wow, bulls-eye!

Gargoyle, it doesn't occur to you I might not be good enough to do a set of trad folk? I do what I can do, and I'm trying to build a set of it.

I do play for an audience of one most often, but, no, I simply like playing the vocal and mandolin parts I worked out with the ghetto, my daughter wanted me to do it, so I did Spaghetti. I don't think it's cute, don't intend the kids to "get" it. The point isn't a clever remake, but that I like the music, sometimes not the lyric, which happens to me a lot with pop and rock. Isn't that how Folk will, eventually, eat rock, and other stuff? Isn't it part of the process of what's traditional? Doesn't somebody need to work the front end? Or is it better if everyone plays safe with what's already "proven". My highest ambition, if I had one, might be to be a baby tooth in the process. I appreciate your interest in what I'm doing, but I think your critical p.o.v. is not right for me. Maybe kids will remember that someone shared music they liked, even though it wasn't century-tested, and that's dood enough for me. Besides, I bring popsicles.

Other tunes I have worked out fun parts for are the talking heads Naive Song on a ukulele, Greg Brown's Sick Kids, (the lyrics are fine as is) Paul Simon's Born at the Right Time, the good Mr. Prine's Big old goofy world, and some tunes I've heard Taj Mahal do work just as they are--my kids love "little brown dog." I have no idea whether some of those things are traditional or not.

I used to not sing at all, and still feel I need an interesting instrumental part to sell my voice. Lately I do a lot of rapid strumming, sort of in the Ritchie Havens vein, only not as well, I do Here comes the sun in a similar way to The Thirty Foot Trailer.

For myself, the best thing I think I've put together is a variant of the Cowboy Junkies' If I Were The Woman--sung in duet with Mr. Prine, but as a sort of lullaby--If I were The Baby and You Were The Dad. My version has an image of Skydivers--"we're skydivers falling, in our separate worlds." And I do the little sax solo on guitar with a dead bass--it's the closest thing to a really good song I've done by messing around with pop tunes. As a parent I've really enjoyed playing role-reversal games with kids, you find out a lot about how they see things.

Sincerely, I can't agree, but thanks for the feedback.