RC: What is the relationship between the records and the live performance? JG: The records are kind of like my children – I try to get them ready, you dress them up and let them get out into world and hopefully make some friends. But I know which ones are the best songs, it’s like the audience completes the song. I don’t know which ones … Going into it I kind of think I know which song is the best one, but then I go into the recording process and I find out the one I thought was going to be the best is the … the slow child. And other ones just sort of jump out at people, so I rely on the audience to finish or complete the …. art. RC: Can you talk about "the role of the folksinger in the 21st Century?"

John Gorka (Feb. 13, 2013) photo by Jeremy Ball

JG: I feel like the folksingers now are kind of like a thread that connects peoples’ lives, because it’s such a mobile society, so it connects people in their different times – maybe when they lived in Boston, or shortly after college, then they moved to North Carolina or wherever, and by traveling so much you kind of keep the connections of the web in place – so there can be some continuity in the thread of the narrative of their lives – and I’m part of that; that’s what I feel is my job as a modern – because I didn’t learn from the oral tradition – I do what I do from that traditional music and also popular music and my own thing, so I’m just trying to make connections.

RC:You said it kind of keeps the web intact, let’s talk about the other Web – the Internet – how does that play a role right now in you actually being involved in connecting with an audience, or growing your audience?

JG: I’m very slowly learning about it; Facebook kind of makes sense to me. Most of the people I connect with are on my personal page; I have a musician’s page, but I’m not sure how to connect the two. I recently learned last week, because my Facebook things go out as Twitter posts, I just found out last week that people can write back to me. So I have to figure out how to get it so that when people respond to me it comes into my email so I can respond to them in a timely manner. I love that because I love being able to talk to people because I’m grateful I get to do what I do. And the Web kind of makes sense to me that it’s a way to keep in touch with people. It’s a very cool thing, but I’m real slow, I kind of learn sideways. As with music, I kind of headed vaguely towards music and away from everything else, and I kind of lurch sideways into knowledge and to getting a little bit better about stuff.

RC: Since you said that what you’re about, really, rests on the live experience, does much of that come out through the Web?

JG: I don’t know, I just think it’s a different avenue – just to express my general approach to things. My general approach to things is – if I write about my own life in a song it’s not because I think my life is special, it’s because I have more in common with everyone else than more differences; there’s only so many experiences we can have – of the big stuff. So they’re just individual examples of the larger truth.

RC: When you said that part of your job is to become a local favorite all over the country, part of our job, too, is to make you guys feel comfortable, so that we are now friends, and so that we’ve now removed a lot of the in-between steps when it’s time for you to come back.

JG: Oh yeah, that’s the greatest thing. That’s what I feel and I love that because I feel like I’m a stranger in a place unless or until there’s one friend – in a city or a town – and I may not be real close but I feel like there’s a kindred spirit there then it’s like – OK, this is a good place. And it’s not about the place; every place may be great but you may not find the person you can make the connection with. I’m very grateful I get to do this, it’s fun – it’s more fun now than it was in the early parts. So I’m tremendously grateful.

RC: Is there some ambition – like, I have to do this, or I have to accomplish this …

JG: Well, I’d like to be able to get my kids through college … and pay the health insurance. If I can do those two things I’ll be a happy camper.

RC: What about artistically?

JG: Well for me, I never figured that I was going to be a mainstream person … I call myself a folksinger because I love the folk world, I don’t know if I’m a folk singer or not but I feel like I’m part of the folk world. Somebody asked me – why do you call yourself a folk singer, and I thought – well what’s the hardest way to make it in music – oh I got it (laughter). But it seems like, I felt like in folk music the songs can be about whatever part of a person’s life; it didn’t have to fit into any kind of a certain box or any kind of format. It’s possible to do that with other forms of music, I’m sure, but folk music was the first place I found that you could write about your whole life but also what’s inside of you. Like, for instance, I have that “Flying Red Horse” song; people say write about what you know, and I think – what you know is just the starting point; it’s the place you jump off from. That’s what I … for music, that’s what songwriting is all about; it’s about what’s coming in, what’s the next song going to be, what’s that knocking at the door.

RC: You said something in the introduction to that song – you said, “we didn’t include it on the record because of our marketing genius,” and I yelled out from the back – join the crowd ( he laughs hard) because I feel like that’s a common thing that runs through pretty much everyone who comes to Tales from the Tavern. It’s because the goal is not …

JG: If you read Suze Rottolo’s book about Greenwich Village in the ‘50s and ‘60s, “Freewheelin’”, it’s a great book. One of the things she said was – we had something to say, not something to sell. And that sums it up for me. If you don’t have something to say you should not have something to sell.

© 2013 Tales from the Tavern