Talkin' New York folk music blues, and meeting Eric Andersen.

This evening I attended a lecture by Stephen Petrus, curator of the "Folk City" exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, and co-author, with Ronald D. Cohen, of Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival, a copy of which I bought, and Stephen kindly signed for me, and which I will review here once I've read it. Based on what I heard earlier, it promises to be a very interesting read. The lecture was held at New York University's Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. One of the topics that came up in the discussion following the lecture is how the real estate market in New York is making the city unaffordable for young, impecunious creative people like those who came here and fueled the folk music boom of the 1960s, memorialized in Bob Dylan's "Talkin' New York".

One of those present was a singer and songwriter I've admired since the 1960s, Eric Andersen, and whom I was able to meet and talk with after the lecture. During the part of his lecture covering folk music of the civil rights movement, Stephen mentioned Eric's song "Thirsty Boots":