Folkadelphia Session: Skinny Bones

This week’s Folkadelphia Session post was written by James Clark Conner, a regular Folkadelphia contributor, conspirator, and audio engineer

Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with my father about what makes folk music folk music.  And it’s not just white guys playing banjos.  Folk music exists in every formative musical spark.  Blues, jazz, reggae, dub, hip-hop, and rap all exist or have existed as a form of folk music.  A sampler is as legitimate of a folk instrument as is a banjo. Yet in a so-called post-genre, post-record label world, we allow folk music to be defined by old, record label mandated, genre classifiers.

This brings me to our weekly Folkadelphia session, this week with Skinny Bones, a Boston duo brought to us by our good friend L.J. Brubaker of Allston Pudding / WTBU / The Key intern fame. Drummer Chris Stoppiello’s computer brings folksy, hip-hop style samples to guitarist/snarist Jacob Rosati’s (electric guitar) fingerpicking and vocal deliverance of subtly narcissistic love songs—a classic pattern in folk lyricism.  And instead of the tired indie duo, or the insulting folk-by-proxy-of-acoustic-guitar band, we get modern folk music.