Folk ForwardFolk Forward

Folk Forward joined SomaFM in 2012, twelve years after Rusty Hodge moved the project from a micropower transmitter he had run at Burning Man to a full-time internet station in February 2000. The network added five channels that year and this one took the acoustic end of the catalogue, arriving just as the folk revival crested. SomaFM has never carried advertising, which is why a channel here can spend its hours on artists who have sold almost nothing and are not about to start.

The rotation is contemporary and indie folk with the roots showing — The Tallest Man On Earth, Iron & Wine, M. Ward and Mandolin Orange alongside Highwoods Stringband old-time and Charlie Parr — and a great many names nobody has heard yet, like Tanbark, Slow Leaves and Sonya Cotton. Mostly voice and guitar, mostly left completely unadorned.