Prog Folk

by Peter Saint-Andre

1999-12-09

Listening to a lot of progressive rock has made me realize again that much of my songwriting has been influenced by that genre. Doing some research, I've learned that there is a sub-genre called "progressive folk", but it's fairly obscure and I've never heard any examples of it, so I don't know if that's how I'd really describe my music. Some of what I've written is not progressive (too tied to idioms of folk, blues, reggae, jazz, or whatever), but some if not most of it would fit well under the rubric of "prog folk", I think. So I'm going to explore this area a bit more and see where it leads me. My progressive explorations might influence how I arrange my songs for recording -- e.g., many of them would work with just guitar and vocals, but I'm thinking some would be great with imaginative bass lines in the mix. The result might be a cross between guitarist Michael Hedges (with whom Michael Manring used to play on some cuts) and what you could imagine as an unplugged version of Yes with just Steve Howe, Chris Squire, and Jon Anderson. Not that I would compare myself to these musicians in terms of chops, but that's the concept. We'll see how it all ends up!


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