BESTBITS / A FOLK HERO
By Gina Van Der Vliet. Gina Van Der Vliet writes for Billboard. ROGER MCGUINN, former front man of the '60s group the Byrds, is aiming to preserve and promote folk music through the World Wide Web. The musician has gone to the unusual extreme of independently creating a Web site, known as the Folk Den, to ensure that a new generation of fans has access to the genre. The site offers a new folk song each month at http://www.insyncnet.com/mcguinn. So far, McGuinn has placed 14 songs on the Internet, including "John Riley," "Golden Vanity," "New York Girls" and "Old Paint," as well as McGuinn's version of "What Child Is This." "I was listening to the radio and realized that folk music doesn't get played as much as it used to," says McGuinn. "And the new folk singers all play their own material because of the commercial pressure to do so. Nowadays, you're not a valid artist unless you write your own stuff. I was thinking that when the old guys are gone, no one will be playing those traditional songs anymore, so I thought I'd pitch in by preserving some of this material on the Internet." While many artists have a presence on the Internet through their record labels, few take an active role in the ongoing development of their sites. McGuinn describes the Folk Den as an "outgrowth of my love for folk music." "I use a multitrack recorder in a home studio and reduce it to an eleven-kilohertz, eight-bit wave file," McGuinn explains. "People do need a sound player in order to play back the files, and they should use Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 for best results." Each track in the .wav format takes 15-20 minutes to download with a 14.4-kbps modem. All songs are accompanied by an informational paragraph, as well as the song's lyrics, guitar chords and related art work - a package McGuinn describes as "something similar to a coffee-table book. When people play the guitar, they can get into it because the chords are there. They can listen to the .wav file to learn the melody and get the words from the Web site . . . It's a true labor of love, just meant to have fun with." The Folk Den site is hosted by the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where computer technician Kenton Adler is responsible for putting it in cyberspace each month after McGuinn sends him the complete package. So far, the Den has received favorable reviews from CNet and the Discovery Channel Online. McGuinn has a new CD from Hollywood Records, "Live From Mars," which fans can purchase on the Web at http://www.mcguinn.com. The page will include a link to the Folk Den, as well as to the Byrds' home page, which provides users with photos, discography and memories of Byrds concerts and tours, leaving fans - both young and old - with plenty of material to absorb. |