By Scott Alarik, 04/29/99

Folk music in Boston is raising its voice.

Normally reserved coffeehouse fans and introspective songwriters are being spotted at hip urban clubs like Tir na Nog, Toad, and the Burren, whooping it up and yee-hawing along to the sounds of furious fiddle tunes, rock-fired Dobro licks, and the dirty downbeat of country blues.

Boston has long enjoyed the reputation of being the folk hub of the nation. The contemporary songwriter revival has become so identified with the city, in fact, that "Boston Songwriter" is the name of a folk genre. It's exemplified by the literate, topical balladry of home-grown stars like Patty Larkin, Bill Morrissey, Dar Williams, and Ellis Paul. When most fans think of folk these days, it's of contemplative songwriters performing in the cozy quiet of coffeehouses like Club Passim.

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But in a growing number of small clubs around town, a very different folk revival is emerging. Young acoustic musicians are discovering the raw, rambunctious joys of American traditional music, Appalachian fiddle tunes and rural blues, Dust Bowl legend Woody Guthrie's stinging populist songs, and the muscular work hollers and gospel shouts of African-American folk genius Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter.

As the Vinal Avenue Ramblers ambled onto the tiny Tir na Nog stage in Somerville's Union Square for a recent Monday show, Mark McGee bobbed his head in rhythmic anticipation of the fun to come. McGee, a 27-year-old graduate student at Lesley College, is one of the fans driving the old-style folk revival.

"In the folk scene these days," he said, "it's all about the singer-songwriter and making new, original music, as opposed to embracing the huge amount of traditional stuff that's out there. And that's what I'm really being drawn to more and more, not only in the music I like to go hear, but the music I like to play for myself. I listen to rock and [contemporary] songwriters, too, but I really like to hear how other people might interpret an old traditional song I'm familiar with."

Purists won't like the moniker, but you might call this new music "roots folk."

To be sure, the term folk once specifically meant traditional, or roots, music - the music of the lower classes whom scholars labeled "the folk." Now folk is associated with various acoustic forms of contemporary music, and the roots revival is cut from that cloth: a return to American traditional music fueled by young musicians weaned on MTV and the current songwriter movement.

This trend is more in synch with similar roots revivals in rock, blues, and country music than with the small, permanent subculture of traditional folk. The respect these players have for the old music is genuine, but the ways they are finding to play it are strikingly modern.

The Vinal Avenue Ramblers serve up the mix of traditional savvy and contemporary sass that is making the old tunes so enticing to new audiences. Its members - Kris Delmhorst, Sean Staples, and Ry Kavanaugh - are also solo songwriters, and their original work has a decidedly contemporary sound.

The band's repertoire draws from bluegrass pioneers like the Stanley Brothers, as well as from their own songs and those of modern folk-pop writers like Gillian Welch, the Waterboys, and Michael Hurley. Their approach, though, is pure old-timey string band, with Delmhorst playing the fiddle, the other two taking turns on mandolin and guitar.

When Delmhorst performed solo at a recent sold-out Club Passim show, you would never have guessed that she was the same musician who had fiddled with such fervor for the Vinal Avenue Ramblers. Her Passim songs were pop-smooth, smart, and introspective - her rootsy heart and beguiling fiddle barely made an appearance.

Delmhorst said she used to see the two strains of her music - the traditional fiddler and the modern songwriter - on separate tracks. Through the Vinal Avenue String Band they are coming together.

"This band has been a great synthesis," she said, "because we're all people who write songs, and have some of that songwriter aesthetic, but who also really value playing together, sharing these organic instruments and sounds."

The folk-roots phenomenon seems to be a happy confluence of art and economics. One factor is the recent boom in new Irish pubs like Tir na Nog and the Burren, whose owners were looking for American music that fit in with the Irish traditional music featured on other nights.

Burren owner Tommy McCarthy said when he opened the large back room of the Davis Square pub in 1996, "I was looking for something along the lines of MTV's 'Unplugged' series, something with that kind of energy, but that would complement the feel in both rooms. I wanted some music that's traveled a bit, the way our music has; but with a lift, some swing to it."

What he found were the Tarbox Ramblers, who are often credited with being the spark that ignited this roots revival. The acoustic quartet plays hypnotically raw covers of Southern white and African-American gospel, blues, work songs, and ballads. It has developed a cult following at regular stints at the Burren Saturdays and Cambridge's Green Street Grill Fridays.

Ramblers founder and lead singer Michael Tarbox, 43, has a hefty repertoire of American traditional songs that is eagerly mined by young players. He is constantly making someone a tape of this old Lead Belly song or that old gospel tune.

Tarbox performs solo on Tuesdays at the Toad in Cambridge's Porter Square, one of the small clubs that, encouraged by the strong economy, are trying to feature live music every night. His solo show, brimming with barrel-house energy and raw, bluesy passions, is perfect for the one-room pub.

Tarbox is that rare artist who, while not a great instrumentalist or vocalist, is a superb overall musician. He puts his earthy baritone and pulsing guitar at the service of the songs, the real stars of his shows.

Why are young pop fans turning to these old songs? "I think about the old blues singers; their experience was so comprehensive," he said. "They were farmers, people who could plant crops, slaughter a cow, deliver a baby; and I think part of what appeals to people about singers like Charlie Patton and Lead Belly is that breadth of outlook, which sort of shimmers beneath the surface of the songs."

Tarbox said that while many of his new fans didn't grow up hearing this music, they have all heard snatches of it.

"I think these songs are familiar to them, but in a kind of ghostlike way," he said. "There's something either that they've heard somewhere before, or they've heard the shadows of it that are in all the pop music they listen to. That adds to the mystery of it, the allure."

"We've always done rootsy stuff here; it's sort of our trademark," Westover said. "So it's really nice to see a songwriter like Alastair, someone with some knowledge of the history of the form. When he writes these contemporary songs, he's drawing from a deeper context than a lot of modern songwriters do."

Like his hero Woody Guthrie, Moock prefers songs that are stubbornly honest and a little dangerous. His song titles tell the tale - and are often the only part of his lyrics a family newspaper dares print: "Here's a Latte and My Middle Finger" and "I Saw Your Mother Naked in the Tub," to name two. But he also sings love songs with a winsome, convincing passion. And he'll slip in a Woody Guthrie ballad and a couple of old folk songs, too.

"What I find is that people are very receptive to performers who try to draw them in," Moock says. "I think that's something people really crave, the kind of community that can happen when music is really shared."

Moock garnered his first fans during a long Wednesday night residency at the Burren, which ended last fall. He has been replaced by French guitarist Bertrand Laurence, who performs the street-tough blues of folk legends like Big Bill Broonzy with a seductive smoothness.

Laurence grew up in Normandy, coming to the blues through his father's extensive record collection. He moved to America in 1979 and was stunned at how unknown the music was here, at least the traditional acoustic-style he played.

"The '80s was not about blues," he said. "It was this wild art explosion, more about punk and day-glo colors and spiked hair and plastic art. Playing traditional styles of music in that atmosphere felt really backwards."

Novices and seasoned pros share the pickin' 'n' grinning duties at the Tuesday Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Jam, hosted by world-class guitarist Geoff Bartley at Cambridge's Cantab Lounge. It is less like Bartley's Monday open mike at the Cantab - in which each songwriter gets a two-song set - than an old-fashioned folk hootenanny, in which anyone who brings an instrument is welcome to join in.

A recent Tuesday found Adam Dewey, leader of the buoyant young bluegrass band Crazy Creek, anchoring a wild late-night session - his pure baritone and pulsing guitar leading the charge for three fiddles, two banjos, two mandolins, a Dobro, and a bass guitar. The high-octane ensemble jammed away to bluegrass standards and old fiddle tunes.

Dewey, who also teaches bluegrass, finds renewed interest in traditional music coming from all corners of the music world.

"I have 10 students under 30; that's never happened before," he said. "People who listen to all different kinds of music are getting back more to the roots. That's what I hear at shows we do. People who've been listening to acts like [hot young bluesman] Keb' Mo or [alternative rockers] Stringcheese Incident or Leftover Salmon come up to us and say they hear the same kind of energy in our music."

Perhaps the most exciting thing about this roots folk revival is how young it is. Players like Kelly and Delmhorst are relative newcomers to traditional music. They bring a freshness and joy to the old music not always present in the playing of more reverent and scholarly exponents. You can fairly hear some new sound being born as they wrestle to reconcile their modern sensibilities with the ancient melodic grace of the old songs.

"Whether they're doing a traditional song or a new one," Tir na Nog patron McGee said of the Ramblers. "there's a simplicity and genuineness that makes a connection between the audience and the music that you don't get as much with other styles of music. What they're doing is musically connected to a tradition that has a deep context, some real roots, rather than some new band out there that's just searching for the genre-du-jour."

Michael Tarbox doubts this is a passing fancy.

"People are always going to want to go back to immerse themselves in the old songs and the old masters like Skip James and Dock Boggs and Lead Belly," he said. "People I know who love this music - whether they grew up around it or are just discovering it now - take it very seriously. Maybe they'll move on and play other kinds of music, but once you've been immersed in it, it's always part of you."

Scott Alarik covers folk music for the Globe.