09/12/2012 Colorado Daily, Concert preview , 'Pokey LaFarge brings his genre-defying mix to eTown Hall'

Y ou can call Pokey LaFarge's music a lot of things -- Americana, old fashioned, a novelty -- but none of it quite fits.

It's Americana in that LaFarge and his band, the South City Three, are playing that all-American sounding blend of folk and country rock. It's old fashioned in that his songs would be more at home on an old record with Bill Monroe and Jimmie Rodgers than on a Spotify playlist next to modern Americana like Deer Tick. For that reason -- not to mention the band's 1920s look -- it's a novelty.

But listening to LeFarge's songs makes any of those categorizations feel too easy, and he doesn't feel like they quite fit, either.

"Maybe we need to come up with some new words," he said.

Like many other musicians, he finds that critics are more comfortable categorizing. He knows they have to, but he doesn't always agree.

"I don't find a lot in common with things that are being chopped up into Americana these days. It's gigantic. It's too broad," he said. "I think that's kind of an answer for it in the first place. It is broad, and that's what I'm going for, but even unintentionally, it becomes broad. I've never been one to want to relegate myself to one specific genre, and (I) never copy anybody, so naturally my own personal style comes out. My personal style and a lot of things that I'm influenced by ... is hopefully beyond categorization."

This is why LaFarge and the South City Three make great touring mates for Jack White. He, too, is deeply concerned with the purity of his music and is influenced by the musicians of the same era that LaFarge loves. Broadly, the two songwriters have the same goals.

"A lot of people in times gone by didn't call their music anything," LaFarge said. "I'm trying to make my own sound and a lot of my heroes did that."

But these values can often be brushed off as idealistic now, and LaFarge definitely has frustrations with the way his music is perceived. It's an understandable feeling, because he very much believes that he's making music the best possible way.

"A lot of people turn their back on what is 100 percent American music," he said, contemplating the "novelty" tag. "A lot of people turn their back on what makes us American -- the good parts of what make us American, not McDonald's and KFC."

Nonetheless, he stays confident that many people can and do appreciate his music, and can even look at the bright side of the "novelty" label.

"I think some of the best music of our time has been novelty music, actually. Some people consider Roger Miller to be novelty, and he wrote some of the greatest songs of all time," he said. "I'm certainly doing my part to open people's mind to music and doing things the way I wanna do them. I seem to be making people happy and people seem to be thankful for the music."