Well, to be fair, I don't listen to a lot of recorded music, and while I hear a lot of music it's mostly in whatever circles I am in.
For instance, I learned "Big Cheesburgers" by Blaze Foley picking bass on stage during a performance at a winery long before I ever heard a recording of him playing it. Same with, say Chick Pyle's "Jaded Lover" or Nancy Griffth's "I Wish it Would Rain" or, for that matter, Rodney Crowell's "I Wish It Would Rain". Those are all folks I either met in passing or knew folks who knew them well.
So while I have a pretty deep familiarity with music from folks with Texas connections, I don't know a whole lot of stuff outside of that area unless there is a connection to my proximately local folk festivals... David Amram or Stan Rodgers or Trout Fishing in America for instance.
I don't think I am unique in that approach to folk music. A lot the lineage of that stuff is mostly people playing in song circles or in small performances picking up a song from someone else, who in turn picked it up from someone, going back to Leadbelly or whoever.
I like recordings- it's super frustrating to hear a song and then not be able to find it anywhere. Especially if I want to learn it and add it to the other 400 or so songs I have memorized at any time, or go back and re-learn something.
Bubbles are real, but I am okay with them because in a certain sense that's what it means to be in a community. But communities aren't usually fragile like bubbles, and folks can come and go without gatekeeping, so that seems closer to how I think about these systems for knowing about folks.
For instance, I learned "Big Cheesburgers" by Blaze Foley picking bass on stage during a performance at a winery long before I ever heard a recording of him playing it. Same with, say Chick Pyle's "Jaded Lover" or Nancy Griffth's "I Wish it Would Rain" or, for that matter, Rodney Crowell's "I Wish It Would Rain". Those are all folks I either met in passing or knew folks who knew them well.
So while I have a pretty deep familiarity with music from folks with Texas connections, I don't know a whole lot of stuff outside of that area unless there is a connection to my proximately local folk festivals... David Amram or Stan Rodgers or Trout Fishing in America for instance.
I don't think I am unique in that approach to folk music. A lot the lineage of that stuff is mostly people playing in song circles or in small performances picking up a song from someone else, who in turn picked it up from someone, going back to Leadbelly or whoever.
I like recordings- it's super frustrating to hear a song and then not be able to find it anywhere. Especially if I want to learn it and add it to the other 400 or so songs I have memorized at any time, or go back and re-learn something.
Bubbles are real, but I am okay with them because in a certain sense that's what it means to be in a community. But communities aren't usually fragile like bubbles, and folks can come and go without gatekeeping, so that seems closer to how I think about these systems for knowing about folks.