At first glance, the two acts playing the Creole Gallery this Thursday couldnt be more different.

Freshwater, an acoustic roots quartet based in Michigan, specializes in a combination of roots-based music and percussive step dancing, drawing on the traditional music of Ireland, French Canada and the Appalachian Mountains for its influences. The groups sound and approach are firmly rooted in the folk community, with a focus on live performance and communal music making. 

The Winslow-King Quartet, meanwhile, is a project fronted by singer/songwriter/composer Luke Winslow-King. A native of Cadillac who has moved on to New York City and finally New Orleans, Winslow-King draws liberally from various forms of roots music, focusing on a  combination of folk and popular styles with classical chamber composition.

Traditional sound for a modern crowd: Freshwater brings folk music to college-aged audiences. (Courtesy Creole Gallery)

The thread connecting these diverse performers, however, is a potent one. Both Winslow-King and the whole of Freshwater are college-aged; by folk standards, practically infants. And if nothing else, the prospect of young people putting new spins on traditional music is the kind of thing that piques curiosity. For example, what the hell is a 19-year-old doing playing bouzouki with an acoustic roots quartet? Shouldnt he been downloading Kanye West ringtones or TiVoing episodes of The O.C. or something?

For his part, Nic Gareiss of Freshwater who is, in fact, 19 and contributes both bouzouki and step dancing skills to the band discovered folk music through youthful exposure to Michigans rich festival circuit. In fact, it was through events in folk festival hotbed Wheatland that Gareiss first began to play informal sessions with the group of musicians who now make up Freshwater.

Their formation was a natural progression, thanks to circumstances as much as anything else: At those kind of events, its really easy to spot young people, he notes, because youre the only other one there.

Its precisely this deficit of young people at folk shows Gareiss hopes Freshwater will help change.

Were trying to take folk music and present it in an appealing way to college students, he says, which isnt exactly the typical audience. So we strategically choose to play shows that a lot of young people would be at. The good thing about traditional music and dance is that it appeals to a broad spectrum of people.

Still, Gareiss is conscious that a broad spectrum of listeners doesnt necessarily translate into numbers, much less mainstream acceptance; he himself bills the band as postmoderns who are interested in exploring the roots and branches of folk music, with all of the connotations of that statement intact. But to him, the place folk music still holds in a postmodern world is to be found in just those darkened corners where modern popular music might not adequately fit: the long-standing traditions of live performance and cultural community.

Folk music needs to exist on a recreational basis, Gareiss says. What were trying to do is take it into the concert hall, remind people that it exists, and hopefully theyll take the banjo off the wall that their grandfather willed them or whatever, and start making music with each other.

If Freshwaters intention is to bridge the gaps between performer and audience, young and old, then Luke Winslow-Kings is a different but equally intriguing mission: His music, a combination of folk, jazz and classical chamber composition, tries to highlight oft-ignored connections between what he calls the peoples music and academic music.

People who study music in school can really hate pop music, Winslow-King says. Ive had professors who would say horrible things about pop music and tell me to keep away from it. But Ive also played bar gigs where people would just laugh at the whole idea of classical music. And I love both. So one of my main goals is to bridge that gap in some small way.

He does this by performing acoustic and folk-influenced music as part of a chamber string quartet, complete with onstage sheet music. But if his classical credentials are more or less inarguable high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, private studies with a professor in New York City and now the pursuit of a university degree in Americas music capital, New Orleans hes no stranger to popular music, either. A fan of Hendrix and Zeppelin in elementary school, he followed these classic influences to the Chess blues of Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters, back to Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Mississippi John Hurt, and finally full circle to the roots of rock n roll.

Musically schizophrenic: The Sound of Urchin never writes the same song twice. (Courtesy The Sound of Urchin)

Winslow-Kings mix of schooled and unschooled tendencies creates the friction that fuels his music, but ultimately it isnt
the audience or the genre that concerns him. People who like folk music probably wont think it sounds like folk, he says, and people who listen to classic music probably wont think it sounds like that, either. But thats good, thats what Im going for: I want my music to be my own.

Pushing an art form in new directions is one of the most exciting things about young blood in any arena. After all, the folk musicians of today are well, the folk musicians of tomorrow. And whether theyre upholding the traditions of non-recorded music in a media-saturated 21st century or blending disparate genres in pursuit of their own muse, theres plenty of room and need for all of them.