Lesson 8 · Arlo
The Tradition
When you write a folk song, you are not writing alone. You are writing in a tradition — a chain of voices stretching back centuries. Woody Guthrie wrote for Pete Seeger. Pete Seeger wrote for Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan wrote for everyone who came after. The tradition is a river, and you are adding your water to it.
The rest of this lesson
Arlo takes this apart properly inside Songmatter — the rest of the lesson, the exercise that goes with it, and a critic who reads what you write back.
Read the rest