[okchorale] Re: Folk for NEFFA?

[Joe Kesselman <keshlam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paula Lieberman wrote:
> There's quite a bit of folk tradition stuff which is fantasy -- e.g. The
> Demon Lover, there are songs about selkies, etc.

That is one approach; gods know I've swiped a lot of that. 

On the other hand, it doesn't have to be that explicitly bound; consider
some of the stuff the Black Book Band was doing, which was pretty much
pure folk-rock. MEW still does a fair amount of material in that
category. For that matter, the cat material can be considered
folk-which-appeals-to-filkers rather than pure filk. 

So you can certainly "sell"  folk to filkers -- after all, that's where
many (most?) of us have our strongest musical roots -- but you need to
either do it unusually well, or find a way to tie it in, or catch/manage
the mood. Otherwise you risk the situation I've sometimes seen: "Good
voice, good instrument skills, but I wish s/he would learn a few songs
that I actually want to hear."

-- 
------------------------------------------------------
Joe Kesselman, http://www.lovesong.com/people/keshlam/
Appearing March 10 at Walkabout, a double bill:
Vance Gilbert shares our stage with Stone Soup
http://www.WalkaboutClearwater.org/coffeehouse.html