Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground

Scott Alarik is the principal folk writer for the Boston Globe, and music critic for National Public Radio's "Here and Now". For 30+ years, Scott has been a nationally known singer-songwriter.

The mainstream music industry is in historic decline, but the small sub-stream world of folk music is thriving as never before. Why? This book creates an intimate portrait of the modern folk world in interviews with over 120 of its biggest stars, and revealing backstage stories about this vibrant grassroots world.

Scott Alarik has been the principal folk music writer for the Boston Globe since 1986. He is also the folk critic for the National Public Radio news program "Here and Now", and before that was folk correspondent for the International Monitor Radio morning news. He is a frequent contributor to Sing Out!, the Folk Music Magazine, and was editor of the New England Folk Almanac from 1991-97.

Before moving to Boston in the early '80s, the Minnesota native spent nearly 15 years as a folk singer and songwriter, releasing three albums and appearing regularly on the public radio hit "A Prairie Home Companion". Host Garrison Keillor wrote of Scott, "I have rarely seen an audience in such a good mood as when he's just been there."

With Alarik's move to Boston, he began writing for a small folk magazine called the Black Sheep Review, which drew the attention of the Boston Globe who invited him to contribute as a freelancer to the newspaper. Within two years, the folk beat was handed to Alarik, who has covered it ever since and has become one of the most influential music writers covering the folk music scene in the country.

During that time, writing overshadowed performing for Alarik. In 1991,the Globe briefly minimized the attention it paid to folk music, and Alarik, in partnership with the Folk Arts Network, founded the New England Folk Almanac to fill the breach in print media coverage. From 1991-97, it grew from a regional music calendar into a nationally respected magazine.

Scott remains a prolific presence in the Boston Globe, Sing Out and on National Public Radio's nationally syndicated show "Here and Now." Scott has written scores of liner notes for folk artists including Tom Paxton, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert, D.L. Menard, Cheryl Wheeler, Ellis Paul, Tony Rice, John McCutcheon, and contra dance legends Rodney Miller and Bob McQuillen. He wrote the introduction to Dar Williams' first songbook, the first bio for the Irish supergroup Solas, and the script for the Smithsonian-Folkways 50th Anniversary Concert at Carnegie Hall, which was read by actors Ossie Davis and Theodore Bikel.

The job remains the same, whether drolly explaining the roots of a cowboy ballad he is about to sing, or singing the praises of the next big folk star in the Boston Globe... and that job is telling folk music's story.