Mary Krause runs Permanent Records in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania. She’s made Antifolk the driving force in her professional

life. From her top floor apartment, overlooking the

ghosts of punk rock that still drift and score and occasionally

riot or get brilliant on South Street, Mary encapsulates the

scene with psychological and textural precision:

"Antifolk gives regular folk the gritty stories of their lives —

tackling addiction and poverty and love gone wrong with honesty

- including ugly emotions like bitterness that often lies in

the hearts of real people. They are songs with edge and an

emphasis on tight songwriting. It's not against folk, it's against

corporate folk."

But it’s an organized environment. It has its own open stages

(as we explored last time in this space). It’s begun to network

and tie itself together on a cellular level. Lach writes to me from

New York City … where he holds

the work into the light and organizes its visibility campaign from

the Lower East Side at a conceptual space called The Fort.

"The Fort has been a mobile club inhabiting several locations

before settling down, in 1994, at The Sidewalk Café (94 Ave. A,

NYC). From early Antifolk pioneers like Roger Manning, Cindy

Lee Berryhill and Kirk Kelly to the current crop of performers

like Moldy Peaches, Joie, Dead Blonde Girlfriend and

Schwervon, the scene has produced hundreds of genuinely

gifted performers who can trace their start to this vital music

scene. As you will learn on the website antifolk.net, the scene

is an ongoing phenomenon that in the past has produced

such acts as Beck, Michelle Shocked, Hamell On Trial, Major

Matt Mason USA and Lach himself … Antifolk has been featured

in print in Billboard, Spin, Performing Songwriter, The

New York Times, etc., as well as on Antifolk special on Much

Music TV featuring Beck, Ani and Lach. The revolution is in full

swing with Antifolk clubs in NYC, Philly and Baltimore."

That’s what seems to infect the notion of Antifolk. Legitimate

rebellion. Organizers like Lach seem spiritually committed to

their project, and point to the past with the force of conviction,

partly because of its eventual effect on pop culture (vis a vis

Beck, Ani DiFranco, et. al.). But, the Antifolk scene seems to

have blown and burned out as a public phenomenon at the

same time rock music was reeling from the afterflash of

grunge. Unlike grunge, whose bands have vanished, imploded

or exploded, leaving craters and smears in their passing, Antifolk

returned to what it always did best: dwelling in the underground.

Mary Krause can certainly be referred to as a chronicler of the

scene’s progression (or perhaps a second-generation Antifolk

proponent). She exists outside of that nascent Antifolk environment,

The Fort.

"I recently read a biography of Beck," she says, "which gave a

great description of the Antifolk scene - while implying that the

scene was now dead. While I'm not sure

that there's much of a true Antifolk

"scene" these days, it’s certainly not

dead. It has just expanded outside of

NYC’s East Village. It’s played by a few

who call it Antifolk and a lot who call it

punk-folk or urban folk. Performers like

Michelle Shocked, Hamell on Trial, Dan Bern and Ani DiFranco

are some of the more famous names who could easily be called

Antifolk."

"When I look at Antifolk today, I see a bunch of young kids who

are still polishing their song craft playing at AntiHootenanny

open mics in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Antifolk

believes that everything is worth singing about and bad words

and ugly scenes bring up real emotions that can challenge an

audience. But when you accept that challenge and the loud

acoustic guitars, you’ll find a lot of truly brilliant writing."

"I like a lot of different genres of music, but more often than

not, these days, when I see great songwriting or a performer

who makes me sit up and take notice, it’s an Antifolk performer

on the stage in front of me."

Later, Mary tells me that Baltimore is still forming. David

Heuman runs the show down there, offering an Antihootenanny

along the lines of NYC’s or Philadelphia’s. She

implies that the Antifolk scene there is more chaotic than

coherent … that the rule breaking aspect may overtake the part

about "tight songs." This remains to be seen.

One site at which Antifolk has matured to the point of consistency

is Adam Brodsky’s Antihoot in Philly. If Lach is the

source and Mary Krause an astute chronicler, Adam is the

nexus at which past and present are forged into something progressive.

He is the nominal leader of his environment … in a far

less direct way than Lach is the leader of his. I get the sense

that Brodsky would object to being termed a leader of anything,

but sitting in at his Antihoot on a given Wednesday makes it

very hard to reconcile that objection with the evidence before

us.

Adam talks to me about his place in the Antifolk scene from the

Permanent Records Compound in Philadelphia:

"First off, Antifolk is a confusing name. Antifolk, at least real

Antifolk, is folk music. And it has more in common with Woody

and Pete than some of that acoustic pop that clutters up folk

clubs. (I’m paraphrasing what they said in The Washington

Post) … whether it was Cindy Lee Berryhill or Lach who made

up the name while walking the streets of the Village in the late-early

80’s, the name is kind of dumb and misleading. But most

names are kind of dumb and misleading: the moral majority,

naked lunch, free sex, Newport FOLK festival … they [Antifolk]

were just some pissed off kids who were rejected by the Fast

Folk West Village establishment, so they made their own scene.

And a bunch of them got signed (and dropped). The scene was

dead before I even wrote my first song "Long Live the Scene."

"Anyway these kids loved and respected the Do-It-Yourself

spirit and the political ethos of old folk music, the Harry Smith

stuff, Woody Guthrie, Bobby D (before he decided to become a

rock star); and they also loved and respected the DIY spirit and

the political ethos of punk rock (the first two Velvets albums,

the Ramones, the Pistols the Dead Boys and Bobby D (after he

decided to become a rock star)). The intersection of punk and

folk is a natural one, especially in the east village of NYC. Now,

I thought I invented Antifolk all by myself, out in the suburbs of

Philadelphia (I didn't); but when I bumped into some of these

people and they became my heroes/friends, I realized that the

genre I had invented was already on the wane. "

"The point is Antifolk has now grown to be more than a four

square block of Manhattan phenomenon. There are pockets of

it in Boston (well maybe not Boston!), Baltimore and Albany

and Austin and St. Paul and Philadelphia. As the genre grows, I

see something interesting happening. It is mutating and I am

becoming the stodgy old guard who knows what Antifolk was

and doesn’t want to see it change … but I suppose that is

inevitable."

Adam raises an interesting point for us in this

performance/writing environment. Does any of this ring familiar?

Is there an Antifolk community in Boston? More specifically,

is Antifolk manifest at Club Passim? As in New York City,

Philadelphia, any of the cities Adam Brodsky lists, there is a

paradox of self-recognition. By the time a given environment

acquires the label, it is sometimes on the wane. So, this too will

remain to be seen.

There is an impetus for leadership in the environment that is

Antifolk. It is causing the edges of the sub-genre to creep into

neighboring and far-flung communities. It seems that it is the

leaders themselves we must identify. On either end of the spectrum

are the proclaimed (self-proclaimed or not!) inventors and

the self-effacing "continuers." Lach tells us that it’s growing

and Adam tells us it’s over. Mary Krause watches one step

removed, and tells us she isn’t sure which it is, in fact. If it is

already here in Boston, but unsung, it would be interesting to

know who counts themselves as Antifolk. Any letter writers out

there? Send your thoughts regarding this subject to Club

Passim (47 Palmer Street, Cambridge MA 02138) or email us

at James@clubpassim.org. Until such notice … we’ll watch

carefully.