Time & Perspective Quote by Dave Van Ronk

There is a particular kind of bitterness that only shows up when you describe an ending in logistics: rooms closing, labels not signing, the dates rattled off like receipts. Van Ronk isn’t mourning “the folk revival” in grand, elegiac terms; he’s documenting a market correction. The early 70s weren’t a poetic turning of the page, they were a slow eviction. By anchoring it in 1971-72, he frames the shift as recent enough to sting, but already inevitable enough to feel pointless to argue with.

The repetition does the work. “1971, ’72” is conversational, almost shrugging, as if he’s trying not to sound wounded. Then the line breaks open: “Although they had pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that.” That’s the tell. The official narrative is that the scene suddenly collapsed; Van Ronk insists it had been hollowing out for years. He’s puncturing nostalgia and industry mythmaking at once: labels didn’t “betray” acoustic music overnight, they followed incentives, and musicians were living on borrowed time.

Context matters because Van Ronk wasn’t merely a performer; he was a witness from the club circuit, the kind of musician for whom “rooms” are ecosystem, paycheck, and community. His subtext is labor politics in musician’s vernacular: when the infrastructure disappears, so does the art. Not because songs stop being good, but because the places that paid for them stop existing.