New Folk Artists

Sufjan Stevens is pretty high on my list!

If you ain't already checked out the fence collective up in fife, scotland : add King Creosote / Lone Pigeon / James Yorkston and Pip Dylan to your lists.......

I'm quite fond of Ron Sexsmith. I don't know if he's considered folk or not, but if not, he's close.

if you want to keep up to speed with what's happening with folk and it's diversions, check out 'Greenman Festival' tagged radio featuring all artists playable on last.fm listen to it here - http://www.last.fm/listen/usertags/bonusgrooves/greenman+festival granted there are come old folk troubadors playing too. But it is certainly a good reference point to what is happening in the new folk world today.

If I may I would like to say that I agree that the folk movement is still alive and well today and is being fueled by sites like YouTube. I am a musician who psosts to YouTube and I play in the solo acoustic format. I have nade many friends there and we collaborate back and forth on songs. So we have a whole bunch of us unknown musicinas who fly under the radar and shun the traditional path of having music be a commodity for consumer consumption. Of course it is very difficult for anyone doing it this way to get people to lsten to their music but we persevere at it.

Most people are so trained to view music as a product so that if it is not marketed to them through the established industry channels for commercial sale they remain completely unaware of us musicians out here doing it the independent way with limited resources.
That's what was great about discovering this group because as Pete Seeger says music belongs to all of us.
Pete Seeger actually enlightened me to this concept of the music industry training people to be listeners and by extension consumers of music product. A wise man indeed. He has devoted his life to bringing music back to the people. Hence the term "folk music" survives intact thanks to people like him.

Here are my songs if you want to check them out:
Where Is Your Soul?

I think there are really good new songwriters and folk artists like Ron Sexsmith and Jolie Holland but frankly, to me, most of the new artists people call folk are very bland and their music lacks solid ideas and structure, mainly the movement known as "New weird America". Specially the words! Very weak. But I still look around, hoping to find someone different...

Joshua James, Cory Chisel, and Kalai are definitely the best up and coming folk artists in my opinion! There is also a very little known band named Tahlequah that is pretty good..

A girl I went to school with, 'Cannavan'. She's absolutely amazing, but she's only playing in wee pubs and clubs across the province at the moment. She'll be big someday though, I bet!

House concerts are the wave of listening to great new folk artists where I live, i.e. Florida. Also the festival circuit. I recently heard: Danny Schmidt, , Carrie Elkin, Amy Speace. But check out Rod MacDonald, tho' he's been around a long time. But my favorites of this decade and last are Richard Shindell and John Gorka.