What is it about Folkies?

If Folkies had saying it would be “If you love it set it free, if it plugs in hunt it down and kill it.”

Kidding. But not, kind of.

These seemingly sweet natured banjo picking, mando wielding aficionados of the unplugged seem to have serious issues about the growth of an artist.

Take, for instance Bob Dylan, when Bob, Lord and King to many a Folkie and Rocker alike, decided to expand his palette of sounds his former zealots wanted him hanged. Turing rabid his flipped out fanatics bleary eyed and booing became hateful and violent at shows they paid good money to get into! All because Bob wanted to say more, and in return they gave him death threats.

I have a friend who has had the hardest time with me developing as an artist. And that is what provoked my tiny but sweet natured rant about Folkies, as he is indeed one.

He tells me my first record was my best, and that I was so pure, so real and that my lyrics were so much more about me and therefore resonated with the listener on a deeper level.

So let me fill all of you in, that record, “More Songs from Circe Link”, really only has one song whose lyrics apply to me in truth. And that song is called “I Like Knowing You Miss Me”, it’s a love song. Kidding.

Other than that song, in my neophyte stages of writing I found it more fun to write about others, still do actually. Rather than writing about myself I chose archetypical metaphors as homage to a specific style with which I was flirting, savvy?

Had I ever had a blue bird tattoo?

Had I ever been a ghost?

Had I ever had my husband die?

Take a wild guess.

And by the way, that song is not about dead babies. I say this because once a squeaky fan after a show excitedly told me she loved my dead baby song! (Lift eyebrow here.)

The last record “Moody Girl” and the new record “Vonnegut’s Wife” hold more intimate details and inner musings than I have ever cared or dared to express in song form. Which, one day I will probably regret, as will any of you that the songs are written about, C’est la vie.

Now don’t get me wrong I love a good old-fashioned folk song. I love my 501’s, waving golden meadows and a bare foot home down hoe down hootenannies but sheesh guys it seems someone’s got a problem with change.

So to my Folkie friend who sits in his wooded solitude, shunning the evolving world, almost a musical Luddite, I say with love and affection the poem is not the poet.

I say trying to tell this storm not to shift is bad for the crops. Trying to fight the waves will get you a lunch of sand and saltwater. I choose impressionism and realism, I choose cola and un-cola, I choose yes and no and everything in between. And if you don’t like it then keep your symbolic chocolate out of my lyrical peanut butter.

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