Yes of course, and sometimes I try to make a song sound as authentic as possible if that seems right to me. But I suspect, and I may be wrong, that when the Skillet Lickers conciously played a tune that way it was mostly because they learned it that way and they liked it that way, and in the 30's there was a market for genuine hillbilly music (which later came to mean something else). Both John Jackson and myself can tell the difference between traditional and non, but we're not married to it, or at least he didn't seem to be the times I've seen him play. And I think that Doc Watson, possibly my greatest musical hero, embodies what I'm saying; He'll sing an unaccompanied ballad older than any recording and you can almost hear it echoing off the sides of mountains, and the next number might be a blues from Mississippi John Hurt and the one after that might be a Sam Cooke song. And when Merle was still here the next song might be from the Allman Brothers. He does not automatically put himself in any box. If somebody else wants to, it doesn't bother me, but I think it takes some of the soul out of music. I have arranged Carter Family songs with Beach Boys harmonies. I wear Birkenstocks every day. The old-time music crowd that educated and nurtured me in the sixties and seventies has made a generational shift that does bother me, because I think intolerant puritanism is always bad. I just wish the open-mindedness that attracted me in the first place was not so hard to find these days.

Concerned, Chet W.