Parenting & Family Quote by Dave Van Ronk

Calling yourself an exhibitionist is a neat way to disarm the room before it can judge you. In Dave Van Ronk's mouth, it reads less like confession than like a functional job description: the folk scene sold authenticity, but it also demanded performance-of-authenticity, a public intimacy that can look a lot like controlled exposure. By anchoring it in childhood, he makes it sound innate, not strategic, as if the stage didn not corrupt him so much as finally give him an excuse.

The line also nudges at a core Van Ronk contradiction. He was the gruff, anti-pretty "Mayor of MacDougal Street", a guy whose persona suggested he couldnt care less about applause. Calling himself an exhibitionist punctures that myth with a wink: even the anti-star wants an audience. The subtext is a quiet demystification of the 60s folk ideal, where earnestness was currency and "selling out" was the great sin. Van Ronk implies that being seen, being watched, being talked about is part of the deal from the start; the purity test is the real fantasy.

Context matters here: in the Village, where everyone was trading songs, styles, and stories in cramped rooms, exhibitionism wasnt only ego. It was survival and community, a way to claim space in a scene that prized rawness but ran on competition. The intent is self-portrait, but also permission: stop pretending you got into music for noble reasons. You got into it because you wanted eyes on you.