By Bob McKillop

Are we in the throes of yet another folk music revival?  Or, alternately, has the folk music scene been consistently vital and vibrant for the last 50 years, with any revival coming not in the music itself, but in the attention that it gets from the mainstream culture?

Michael Scully is an author, cultural history scholar, folk music aficionado, and attorney, and he has written a book that takes the alternate position.  Michael’s book is titled “The Never-Ending Revival: Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance”, and it will be published by The University of Illinois Press in April of this year. 

Michael’s concept for the book came to him in a sort of epiphany during a conversation with a young folk musician at the National Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis in the early 1990’s.   Along with his film maker wife, Michael had been researching and producing a film about the “great folk scare” of the late 1950s and early 1960’s, and was describing the material to this young performer.  In response, the young man said to Michael “you should make a film about what’s going on right now in the folk scene”.  Michael was taken aback by the simple concept that, once every decade or so, folk music appeared as a blip on the music industry radar, only to fade after a short period of time.  But under that radar, folk music had retained its vibrant, strong core of support and fans.

Michael focused his book on Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance because of the similarities in the cultural environments that created them; but also because of the manner by which they define folk music for themselves, and influence the definition of folk music for the larger folk audience.

Rounder and the Folk Alliance are post-60’s institutions; the folk music they promulgate is not about the ‘60s anymore.  For instance, the founders of Rounder Records came of age and were influenced by the events of that decade, but were also deeply affected by the political “new left” and the sustained elements of ‘counter culture’ that survived the 1960’s.   These various elements of influence resulted in the output of an incredibly eclectic mix of music, all of which became to be called “folk music”.  This begs the question, what is the unifying element?

The common thread, according to this book, is an emphasis on the vernacular heritage and history of the music, on small, intimate settings, and on an attempt by the participants to recreate, at least symbolically, the idealized pre-industrial communities from which the concept of "the folk" emerged.  But still, the folk community can often have a large problem defining its own genre for even itself. Most of us folkies joke about this, but at the same time, we need some criteria by which to decide “what to leave in, what to leave out”.  And this results, in Michael’s opinion, in an implicit agreement in the folk community on a loosely defined stylistic range that will be accepted among the participants in folk music institutions and events.

Michael promises that the book has plenty of interesting back story on Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance.  Mainers will enjoy his recounting of Ken Irwin’s and Marion Leighton-Levy’s version of their first encounter.  Marion Leighton-Levy is a native Mainer; in the summer of 1967, she had just finished her first year of college at Northeastern University. Ken Irwin was in Portland working for The Spurwink School. Leighton-Levy walked up to him as he was reading in a Portland coffee shop and asked him “are you talkable”.  We must assume that he was!   Bill Nowlin, the remaining member of the Rounder triumvirate, had already known Ken Irwin for years; they had been college roommates and friends since 1962.

Michael Scully came to be a folk music expert via a circuitous route.  He began his career as a lawyer in commercial litigation, but grew tired of that after a dozen years of stress.  He got back in touch with his interest in the 1960’s folk scene by reading about it during his lunch hours.  His wife was a producer of industrial films, and the couple attempted to shoot a documentary on the ‘60’s folk revival.  They had great success in interviewing the principal folk artists, but not in finding financial backing for the film, and the project stalled.  Michael enrolled in a PHD program in cultural history, and soon after, began the process of writing this book.

The process was fun, but difficult; Michael says that the best part of the work was in meeting the folk artists.  Their openness, willingness to share their stories and opinions, and their generosity impressed him greatly.  The folks at Rounder Records, he says, were generally respectful of the writing process, cooperative for the most part, but cautious at times, and the relationship became occasionally stressful.  Michael says that he retains a good and easy working relationship with them.

The strong relationship between the Folk Alliance and Rounder Records will be evident on February 20th, at the North American Folk Alliance’s annual conference in Memphis Tennessee, when the Folk Alliance holds their Folk Awards Show.  This year, the recipient of the Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Awards is none other than Rounder Records.

“The Never Ending Revival – Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance” will be available in April, and published by The University of Illinois Press.  You can order it through your local bookseller, and you can place a pre-order with Amazon.com at a discount from $40.00 list price.   I have not read or reviewed the book, since it is not yet available, but talking to Michael has convinced me that it is well researched, insightful, and enjoyable.