Gifts for Picky Folk Music Fans

Newly un-blacklisted in the mid-1960s, Pete Seeger took to the television airwaves with a short-run show called Rainbow Quest. And now, episodes from that series are available on DVD. It's a great archival gift for any fan of American folk music, country and rock.

Generally considered one of the best weekends in contemporary folk music, North Carolina's MerleFest draws artists, bands and fans from all over the world. The line-up for 2008 is in, and includes the Avett Brothers, Sam Bush, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ruthie Foster, Infamous Stringdusters, Hot Buttered Rum, Old Crow Medicine Show, Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet (with Bela Fleck, Casey Driessen, and Ben Sollee Sun), and so many more.

In her nearly 20 years on the national folk circuit, Ani DiFranco has averaged about an album a year. Finally, she's collected two CDs-worth of material from each of those records for a hugely comprehensive retrospective album. Canon can serve as an excellent primer to new DiFranco fans, and also has some exquisitely re-arranged, re-recorded versions of some of her old classics.

If you're looking for some of that nice old timey jug band kind of music, you can't do any better than the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Including some members of Sankofa Strings, the Chocolate Drops' most recent album, Dona Got a Ramblin Mind is one of the best efforts in old time music lately.

I got a new guitar this year, and it's my very first Martin (I've always played Alvarez). The thing I love about this guitar is that the tone is so incredibly warm. I actually had someone come up to me after a show and say it is the musical equivalent of butter. It has a solid sitka spruce top with composite body, which keeps it on the affordable end of the Martin line, but still has the same great Martin quality and lifetime warranty. They didn't have to drill a hole in the body to get the pickup in there. There's a mic in the sound hole and a pickup under the bridge, and it sounds as warm and full unplugged as it does through a PA.

Easily one of the best albums of the year, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's collaboration on Raising Sand is an excellent album for people interested in folk music, but afraid of committing to the genre. It features an exquisite blend of folk, alt.country and that awesome groovy rock sound Robert Plant is known for. A reader recently emailed to say it's the only album she and her boyfriend can agree on. Need I say more?

Probably one of the best comprehensive histories of American folk music that I've read in recent memory, Which Side Are You On? starts with the folklorists of the early 20th century and follows the craft up to the present day, stopping along the way for excellent insight into the careers of some of the greatest American folksingers. Excellent for bibliophile folk fans.

Woody Guthrie wrote hundreds of songs in his lifetime, and these CDs include over a hundred of them. If you know someone who loves folk music, protest music, love songs, narrative songs about history, silly songs, or any other style of music, this is an excellent gift for them. It's also a great introduction to the extraordinary work of one of America's greatest songwriters, whose work has influenced other great songwriters like Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco and Bruce Springsteen.

Considered to be one of the more enigmatic personalities in contemporary American folk music, Bob Dylan has rarely given interviews over the course of his 30+ year-long career. Now, Dylan expert and Rolling Stone contributor, Jonathan Cott, has compiled 31 of the most earnest and telling interviews given by this elusive folk poet.