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Woody Guthrie said, " These pleasures that you cannot ever forget are the yeast that starts working in your mind and then all at once you are building a brand new world again,based and built on the mistakes ,the hard luck and trouble of the old one.

A Folk Song isn't supposed to mean something , it's supposed to BE something.
It will write itself if it is inside you wanting to come out. You ,the writer,

become merely a tool, a transmitter, a conductor of truth. Giving words and music to the
feelings common to the human condition. You aren't trying to say something new because folk music is old ,as old as time itself. It is a running conversation with your fellow man.

Start by deciding what story you want to tell. Are you moved by the sight of your grandfather in his rocking chair, or a young soldier leaving his family ?
Maybe you just want to sing about a long lost friend. Start writing and go with the flow.Don't censor yourself. Say anything and keep going. Look it over after you're
done.If you have the music to go with the lyrics that will help.Trust your creative spirit.Usually songs are poems put to music,if you are good at rhyming it gives you an edge. Stay simple with you ideas. Listen to such greats as Woody Guthrie and you will realize how uncomplicated his songs are.

American folk music is what is left after all the rest is torn from us. It is the
mast from which we fly our flag of independence and basic freedoms.
It speaks out of the mouths of the pioneers alone on the endless plains.
It whispers on the winds across our troops in Iraq.
It is who we are.

Woody said, "The human race will sing this way as long as there is a human to race."

Learn more about this author, Johnette Loefgren.
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