Spider John Koerner

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #137 (August/September 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Spider John Koerner

Barroom Folk

by Tom Nelligan

Traditional music is timeless, and Spider John Koerner is fast getting there himself.

As he approaches the age of 70, some 50 years after he first picked up a guitar and more than 40 years after finding himself in the spotlight of the 1960s folk revival, the hardy-voiced Koerner is still out there in the clubs singing old American songs, making them sound primordial and urgent as he stomps his foot for rhythm, pounds his 12-string guitar, tells an occasional corny joke, and delights audiences with what he calls with a smile, "folk music played barroom style." His repertoire is mostly songs that you've probably heard but have largely forgotten, played with skill and respect but also with a sense of fun.

Koerner's uncommon dedication to old chestnuts like "Shenandoah" (which he plays uptempo with a strong beat), "Acres of Clams," and "St. James Infirmary" emphasizes that they represent a form of folk music that is seldom heard in most folk clubs and yet is an integral part of American history and culture. Of course, he's written a few lasting songs himself, like the sadly ironic "I Ain't Blue," best known through the singing of Bonnie Raitt.

Koerner's musical career began in 1958, two years after the Rochester, NY, native moved to Minneapolis to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota. "Some guy asked me if I wanted to listen to some folk music," he reminisced last March before a Boston-area show. "We went up to his dorm room, and he played the Weavers, Josh White, and a Minnesotan named Cynthia Gooding. They kind of blew my mind, in a way, at the time. I had never been associated with or heard that kind of stuff. He loaned me his guitar and a Burl Ives songbook, and in a couple weeks I could play a tune and sing a little bit. I didn't know what I was doing, but that was the beginning of it."

Like many other folk musicians of his generation, Koerner started out playing just for fun, but then discovered that he could actually make a living from it. "When I started out, the only thing that made it cohesive at all was getting together at somebody's house and drinking Chianti with banjos and guitars all over the place, and going around singing songs. On the other hand, the 60s were about to happen. I was out in California, and I read about the folk coffeehouses out there in a Playboy magazine. I went to see some of that out there, and when I got back to Minneapolis there was our own version, the Ten O' Clock Scholar, and that's when I realized that there were a lot of other people into it, too. At that point you could start to see that something was happening. There was a big boom in folk music, and if you adjust it for inflation I probably made more money than I ever have since. And it was a lot of fun, too."

[cover #137]