IS BALANCING ACT ‘FOLK’?

With the success of such neo-folk artists as the Pogues, the Smiths, Suzanne Vega and Phranc, a mainly acoustic band like the Balancing Act should be happy to be included in the ranks of artists who have found a new way to dress up an old style, right?

Wrong.

“I don’t see there being any real folk scene now,” says guitarist Jeff Davis, 27. “There’s been talk of a folk revival but I don’t see that we belong there.

“What is folk music? That’s such a gray area. I don’t think we’re any more of a folk group than we are a rock group or a jazz group. In a way it’s short-changing us to call us a folk-rock group. Without trying to start a new religion or anything, I think we’d like to be issued our own genre.”

While the Balancing Act’s slightly jazzy folk-rock does seem to fall outside traditional boundaries, that doesn’t seem to bother club audiences--after the first few songs.

“A lot of times we’ll play a new place where the audience doesn’t know us,” says Davis. “And we’ll get up there with acoustic guitars and I feel the audience automatically writes us off. They’re skeptical and think we’re not going to rock out or be cool enough.

“But within a few songs, we win them over because what we’re doing is a lot more daring than four or five guys in black leather cranking out at 120 decibels. It’s easy to hide behind all that volume, to strum your guitar once and have this massive sound come out. We’re getting up there with a lot less protection than a lot of bands.”

Rather than deliver a flashy show, the Balancing Act--Davis, percussionist Robert Blackmon, bassist Steve Wagner and guitarist Willie Aron--concentrates on its songwriting. While this approach may be more personally satisfying, it doesn’t always result in the splashy gossip items that help a band make a splash on the local music scene.

Notes Blackmon, “I think we’ve been pretty successful to attract the audience we have, but I think we’d get much more attention by performing nude or whatever--we could do the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers’ trick. It’s no big deal. But that’s not music.

“The band appeals to people who are willing to experience the music rather than be beat over the head with it. I don’t see it appealing to a bunch of 13-year-olds who would otherwise be listening to Van Halen. We’ve limited its appeal to an extent.”

The selective idiosyncrasies of the Balancing Act, which began performing in early ’84 after an earlier incarnation called the Art Students, may hit its mark with certain audiences but it’s a different story when record companies are involved. A local label that was looking seriously at the band last year decided to pass because it had difficulty defining the group.

“They said, ‘Well, we don’t know how to market you,’ ” recalls Blackmon. “ ‘We can’t put you in a category.’ ”

That hasn’t stopped the quartet from getting the music out on vinyl. A debut EP, produced by Peter Case, came out recently on the group’s Type A label.

“New Campfire Songs” is an accurate representation of the Balancing Act’s high-wire musical path: a largely acoustic delivery with up-front lyrics and melodies that borrow from the spectrum of pop music. It is folk music in a sense, admits Davis.

“We play the music that is indigenous to us,” he says. “If we were to play Appalachian songs, that wouldn’t be folk music to us. (Folk music) to us is a blend of all of our influences.”

Adds Blackmon, “Where Costello and Tom Waits and everybody else meets creates our folk music. Our goal is to take the history (of pop music) and re-create it in our own version.”

Having settled on a style they consider “uncategorizable,” the members of the Balancing Act are content to wait for the rest of the music world to catch up--although they admit that the conservative nature of the industry doesn’t offer much hope, no matter what tag they’re given.

“Somebody could sign us up and try to make us into something--give us electric guitars and big hair--and we’d be the worst band in the world,” says Davis.

“That’s not who we are. We’re going to wait around for as long as it takes. That may seem incredibly idealistic and naive but I think it’s going to take a special label to recognize what we do.”

“We’re not ever going to be an obvious hit,” adds Blackmon. “I don’t know that the record label exists that will deal with us on the level we want.

“The folk tag may be a misnomer, but if that’s what we get, that’s what we get. If some major label picked up the record and tried to market us as the lowest common denominator they wouldn’t be successful. They’re going to have to market us as an anomaly.”