Folks:

I think y'all seem to have gotten a little afield of the idea of "genre" as I understood it. I always thought "genre" was what bin record stores decided to put your stuff in. And that had more to do with how it *sounded* than what the songs were about. Charley Pride (to cite a prime example) was "country," not "black guy." Bob Dylan was "folk," then "folk-rock," then "country."

Wherewith, a few personal definitions. Personal, because I don't feel there are any hard and fast definitions. Genre, I guess, is in the mind of the beholder (though we will obviously accept other people's ideas of "genre" each time we visit the record store, won't we?).

I use the late, great Steve Goodman's definition of country music: Country music songs are always about Mother, trucks, trains, farms, prison, dead dogs, and Christmas. I use that definition a lot when I'm playing in public. "This is a country music song because it's got a dead dog and a truck in it," for instance. I only know of one song that has all those things in it, and it's one In wrote--"I'm Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas."

And bluegrass songs are always about death. Think about it--Mom died, the dog died, the crops died, I'm gonna go to heaven when I die. And so forth. Any song not about death is probably classifiable as something else.

Joe

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