I often divide my folk music collection into Roots, Branches and Leaves. The roots are artists who I listened to in the 560s and 70s. The branches are folks I discovered in the 80s through 2010. Finally, the leaves are musicians I have discovered since 2010, when I started to write about music. Today I listened to the music from one of those branches, John Gorka.
One of my goals, when I first started to blog, was to present the music that I have listened to over the last fifty years! Wow! Has it really been that long? Anyway, over the course of my blogging I have written many about my favorite musicians like John Prine, Phil Ochs and Tim Paxton But there are so many more that I want to write about. The problem has been that I took the blog in a totally different direction. I started to write more and more about discovering new music and new genres. Those explorations have been great and have led me to some fantastic bands and musicians. However, there is only so much time in the day to listen to music so, as I listened to more new music, I listened to less old music.
So we’ve all been there, it’s late at night the TVs on you fall to sleep to its glow, what could go wrong??…….maybe Steve Goodman can tell us….. in a song, that always brings a smile to my face, no matter how many times I hear it!!
Sometime in the early 90s I picked up the CD Legacy: A Collection of New Folk Music. Through that album, I was introduced to two 
folksingers who became favorites from that album on, John Gorka and Bill Morrissey. I was thinking about the album and John Gorka, because I was listening for the first time to Stu Larson and his album Vagabond, about which you will be reading soon. Anyway, my thoughts revolved around the first songs I ever heard by artists.
Ok so on Wednesday, my wife moved closer to that magical life milepost the big 60! I won’t say how close she is because if I did she’d say “Well, I’ll still never be older than you!” And she’s right because as you may know, I passed that mile post a couple of years ago! Anyway over the last couple of weeks I keep flashing back to the folksingers that I have loved over the years. This morning I remembered the said passing of Steve Goodman and on this date but in 1973, Jim Croce died in that tragic plane crash.
The thing I love about writing this blog is finding new musicians to listen to, but what I often don’t take the time to do is listen to the ones I love! So the other night over the last hour of work I listened to two of my old favorites. First Slaid Cleaves and then John Gorka. Like many of the folks I listen to my introduction to Slaid Cleaves came from the Gene Shay Show on WXPN in Philly. It was a Sunday night that I was working and remembered to turn on Gene’s show and caught the end of “Broke Down”. I didn’t recognize the name but I immediately went out to find the album. It took a couple of trips to my favorite used CD store to find it but it eventually showed up and I’ve been a fan since the first listen! My wife and I have seen him several times here in Philadelphia. The last time was at the Tin Angel for a CD release show for Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away and every time I leave a show a happy man! The first time we saw him was at the The Point in Bryn Mawr, Pa (I miss that place) and my daughter went with us. Before the show I saw Slaid at the bar and asked if he’d play my daughter’s favorite song “Lydia”. He said he was going to do it as part of the show. When he started the song he screwed up the lyrics! After the show we got Elizabeth an autographed photo which is in her room somewhere, the signature says “Sorry I messed up your song!!” One year for Christmas My wife sent away for several of Slaid’s earlier CDs and they all came autographed!! Anyway, it was good the other night to hear old favorites like “Broke Down”, “Key Chain”, “No Angel Knows” and “The Ballad of Sandy Gray”! 
My into to John Gorka was from the album Legacy: A Collection of New Folk Music. It was an album designed to introduce fifteen young singer songwriters and the group that they collected was pretty great. Here’s what folk radio host for WNEW-FM , Pete Fornatal said in his liner notes for the album:
