The voice of authority

I finally got to listen to Border Songs by Jordan Bullard, the the guy I met on the airplane. He writes the kind of folk I like, with skilled, soulful strumming and strong messages that don't scream "listen to this message because it is important!" Jordan and I had talked about how we hate songs that explicitly preach at you, so that didn't surprise me much.

What did catch me by surprise was his voice. You can never predict how people will sound singing by how they sound speaking. Jordan sings a lot deeper than he talks.

More than that, though, was the sense of authority. In conversation, he was just like anybody else—a person with opinions that might be correct or incorrect. Now, as the singer, he gave the impression of being all-knowing, simply presenting reality as it was.

That's the beauty and the power of music. When you sing about the world as you experience it, it's hard to be wrong.

Singing for folks

As I was preparing for our Tucson Folk Festival debut Saturday morning, my boyfriend asked a question: What qualifies a band or artist as being "folk"? More specifically, what criteria do the people running the TFF use when screening applicants? Cinder Bridge doesn't usually bill itself as a folk band, but they let us in.

My answer: I have no idea. We don't do traditional folk, and we don't do political folk. There's not a guitar player to be found in our band, so we don't sound like stereotypical folk. My best guess? We're acoustic (or at least my keyboard competently mimics an acoustic instrument), and we're interested in participating in an event that has the word "folk" in it ... and that's good enough for them.

We got a good response when we played, so it seems to have been good enough for our audience as well. Wahoo!

I think "Folksinger Song," by local artist Brad Fritz, sums it up nicely:

I really don't know if I am a folksinger
But I sure do like singing for folks