Visiting the Folks

I was born by a Kerouac stream under Eisenhower skies
         --John Gorka

The New Folk Movement is now about twenty years old, and John Gorka is one of its leading voices, along with peers like Nanci Griffith and newer arrivals like Ani DiFranco. Over nearly two decades, Gorka has honed his warm baritone and offbeat songwriting skills with 200-days-a-year touring. His fine new album, The Company You Keep (Red House), is a characteristically bittersweet disc, understated but sharpened by deft word usage and a grasp of life's conundrums and paradoxes.

Gorka fits contemporary notions of a folk musician. He was a history and philosophy major in college, and got his performing start at coffeehouses in the late 1970s. His tunes are self-reflective, wry, pungent, pessimistic but unwilling to despair; they have titles like "Joint of No Return" and "Wisheries." In "What Was That," he sings, "Guess I'd better get back up/Get up off the ground again/Guess I'm really not so tough/Up is farther than it's ever been." And up he goes, discarding regret and clearing a space for whatever future he faces.

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