When you claim to like "roots music", to me it says you've decided on sound over style. That your acts would do better, if they want your money, to record their songs ona front porch with acoustic instruments. That the power going out in the middle of the show is irrelevent.
But too often, "roots" is in the same boat as this stupid retro-trend that has overtaken the hispter population. Dressing up like a pin-up girl, or some turn of the century yokel - its bad enough when it doesn't effect the music I love.
Too often losing msic from the 20's means attempting to sound just like them. Somehow, I think they lost the message.
I know guys who play guitar without a pick because it sounds more authetic. While I think thats a little extream, it does illustrate the unspoken benefit of the front porch concert - its fairly honest. The sounds aren't perfect, the voices don't auto-tune, and musicians learn to adapt to mistakes, failures, and "what song is this again?"
I tend to blame any guy who has a crush on zooey deschanel. its not an accurate system, but its a nice way of cutting through a large amount of frauds in one shot. To me its comprable to Applebee's. Lets not bother creating an atual atmosphere and character to each restaurant nation wide, lets just put a bunch of rusty sleds and tricycles on the wall and call ourselves rustic.
The point is honesty in total, and we're being fed, partially by corporate cahs-ins (but thats to be expected) and the other portion is by a rebellious angry sect of the population who wants to take a shot at modern, capitalistic America. A drive to return to a simpler time, a way to physically express that "things were better then." But this in your face prophetering is as obnoxious as it is wrong. As evident as they'd like their opinions to be, its even more evident that their hollow shells of people with short-sighted reactionary theory.