Last summer while I was wandering the state of Maine working on hiking trails, I brought my guitar. I played in the evening, mostly old songs that I already knew, while everyone else sat about in a state of utter exhaustion. One night, I was playing the Weepies song “Somebody Loved,” and my boss decided he wanted to learn it. So I wrote down the basic chords and, despite some frustration, he was able to pick it up quickly.

“But it’s so easy,” he said, obviously annoyed that I had passed on an insignificant bit of fluff.

Well, of course I got mad and defensive and he got mad and defensive. My little-intended act of kindness became a continuing feud over how all my favorite songs were musically boring. While I memorized bafflingly similar chord progressions, he picked out the intricacies of rock giants such as Led Zeppelin.

Back in high school, when my musical tastes were mortifyingly different from most other kids in my small Ohio town, I listened to my share of Zeppelin — just to keep up. I won’t deny that the band does have a couple good songs. But, on my own, I discreetly drifted away into the more nebulous worlds of jam bands and then later folk-pop, deliriously happy with this music that most of the musical world likes to keep an arm’s length away.

Why do such a thing? Why waste time on such unoriginal material?

Because it’s not actually boring. Yes, the chord progressions are so predictable that my guitar is visibly worn in some areas from concentrated use. I’m not trying to hide it. But there’s a reason that those chords are used over and over again. They sound good.

It’s the poetry that attracts me. Or the way some artists can write lines that feel like they’ve come out of my own head, I know the ideas they express so well.

The really great thing about folk songs is their accessibility. Folk music can be easily shared by the so-called “experts” as well as amateurs. It’s the foundation for campfire circles, and more generally, it’s a connection between one human being and another.

It’s kind of like when, in third grade, everyone knew the jump rope rhymes. They weren’t the most complex masterworks, but if you knew the words, you were in. And it was fun.

Another song from the Weepies, “Simple Life,” says just as much:

“Is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds / they’d hear just a tune / not understand my love for words / but you would hear me and know / I want only this, I want to live / I want to live a simple life.”