Roger McGuinn's latest album, " Treasures from the Folk Den," is intended to capture, for posterity, a collection of 18 traditional folk songs performed by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, and Tommy Makem. The album ended up nominated for a Grammy.

The idea was to travel the country doing impromptu "field recordings" of this folk music, with McGuinn and these icons performing new versions of folk classics. Like the music collectors of the early 20th century that had gathered traditional music recordings for the Library Of Congress, McGuinn had to find a way to make the recordings feasible.

He decided to use Cool Edit Pro from Syntrillium for 64-track recording with his PC, learning how to use the system to record, edit, and mix the record himself. At their home in Orlando, Florida, he and his wife Camilla packed the car with his computer, a few microphones and instruments, and hit the road.

"I loved the idea," explains McGuinn, "It was much like what John and Alan Lomax had done back in the '30s. They'd gone out with an early disk recording machine to record people in the Appalachians singing almost forgotten songs…only I was going to use a computer with multi-track software instead of a tape recorder."

After capturing many more of the sounds of the preeminent musicians of the genre, including Josh White Jr., Odetta, and Frank and Mary Hamilton, the McGuinns drove back to Orlando, where Roger mixed the recordings with the same system. Sending the CD master to Appleseed Records, it wasn't too long before "Treasures from the Folk Den" was nominated for a "Best Traditional Folk Album." (The winner was "Down From The Mountain," produced by T Bone Burnett.)