JUST PLAIN FOLK: BILL STAINS TO PERFORM TONIGHT AT ROSE THEATRE

While coming of age in the '50s and early '60s, folk music was the pop of its day, people like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were stars, and the lines between country, pop and jazz were well defined. In 1998, most traditional folk musicians are, like Bill Staines, well-known mostly to aficionados, and those distinctions between genres have been blurred.

If people wonder where the new Gordon Lightfoots are, Staines said by phone from his home in New Hampshire," "They're the new country.

"If you took Garth Brooks out of the country music industry he would be writing songs like Gordon Lightfoot."

One of the progenitors of traditional folk music, Staines will perform at 7 tonight at Forrest H. Rose Theatre on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University. The return engagement after his performance here a year ago is a benefit for KRCU-FM.

Staines was there in Cambridge and Boston when folk music took off. He says two kinds emerged: the urban folk of writers like Eric Anderson and Paul Simon and the rural sounds created by people like Lightfoot, and Ian and Sylvia.

Popular musicians like John Gorka and Shawn Colvin are keeping the urban tradition alive, Staines says, though he calls their music "acoustic pop." And he looks to other Nashville artists -- Lyle Lovett, Kathy Mattea and Emmylou Harris -- for a popular kind of rural folk.

In the year since his last appearance, Staines has released two CDs. "One More River" is a follow-up to "the Happy Wanderer," a collection of traditionals. Volume II of "The First Millions Mile," songs from his years with Rounder Records, also was released.

Staines is three songs short of releasing his newest contemporary album.

He is best known for the beautiful song of remembrance titled "Roseville Fair," but one of the tunes that also drew a good response last year is titled "Rooty Toot Toot for the Moon." He learned it in 1975 from someone he met in California.

"It's pretty much a piece of fluff but it's fun," he says. "People walk out singing it."

But Staines has never recorded the song. "I'd rather have songs with more meat on the albums," he says.

Staines doesn't mind when audiences sing along to his music. "It's part of what I do. I like to have the audience involved and the energy coming back to me that way."

That's true even if the audience doesn't always sing on key, Staines says.

"I have always toured as a solo performer, and it's like having your own chorus with you."

Staines' appreciation for the folk music roots to be found in some popular music doesn't mean he has yielded as a champion of the traditional music.

"I believe there are a lot fewer folk musicians than there are musicians labeled as folk musicians," he says.