Late last night I wrote up a song about a homeless man I had met some years back, and his vision. Today I premiered it to a few people, to mixed reviews. Basically the people who appreciate folk music appreciated it, those who didn't did not.

I played it at the Guthrie Center, and one of the ladies who started the Guthrie Center in Pampa, complained that it was "the same monotonous tune" (meaning I was playing the same chords; ironically, I was NOT, by the way). I grabbed a Woody Guthrie songbook and showed her that EVERY single song in the songbook was written in the simple 1-4-5 arrangement, half of them were in the key of "G" (I was playing in the key of "A"), and that many of them used the exact same tune.

Ironically, this is one of the people who said I should play my own stuff, develop my own style. Then she comes back and says basically my style is crap. Nice.

The arrangement I use is a simple arrangement, true, but so is most folk music. I am still getting over the irony of someone who celebrates the life of Woody Guthrie complaining about my use of that arrangement.

Oh, well. As I was telling someone else who wasn't crazy about my arrangement of "Saginaw, Michigan" (ALSO 1-4-5), "I'm not playing it for YOU!"

The guy whose criticism she was basing hers off of is a music teacher. But as I noted to someone else, he has ZERO gold records on the wall, so perhaps HE'S not the one to whom I should be listening.