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Mike Seeger performed at Royce Hall last weekend as part of the Washington Square Memoirs concert, a tribute to folk music.

Folk music was born out of the strife of the working man.

The spare, socially-conscious songs, played mostly on acoustic guitar, grew up in the Dust Bowl. They got taken around the entire country in a sweep of popularity in the late 1950s and ’60s. One of the most legendary spots for folk music dissemination was Washington Square in downtown Greenwich Village, a place where people would gather round to play and listen to all types of folk music.

The Washington Square Memoirs concert at Royce Hall on Saturday night was a show put together to reflect that community’s importance in folk music history. At the show were folk music icons Mike Seeger, Tom Paxton, John Hammond and Loudon Wainwright III. People interested in a comprehensive spattering of this era of folk can pick up the triple album “Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Boom, 1950-1970.”

The concert’s artists represented different facets of the malleably defined genre that is folk. But the gorgeous Royce Hall didn’t help transport the audience to an urban Washington Square – type setting. The show at times felt stilted in its attempt at genuine folky goodness, and none of the artists were able to get the audience into a truly inspired campfire sing-along.

Mike Seeger, one in the long line of Seeger family musicians most famously known for his half-brother Pete, opened the show with some real good “old-timey” jams. With educationally enriching introductions to his songs and a sweet Southern voice, Seeger charmed the audience with his impressive display of skill on a variety of instruments from the quills, a panpipe-like instrument, to an African gut string banjo.

Blurring the lines of genre, John Hammond played some genuine blues. With covers of songs by greats like Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, Hammond’s set was charged with emotional ruggedness. This guy has some major chops as a blues guitarist and his vocals were passionate, if less acrobatic.

Tom Paxton and Loudon Wainwright III represented two sides of the same genre coin. They both played topical songs and straight-ahead folk/folk rock. Paxton was the night’s lone disappointment. He played a set that was much too long. And while his singing and guitar playing was certainly adequate, his songs were too predictable. He played novelty songs and songs that attempted a broader social-consciousness, but in all cases the lyrics were too inane.

Wainwright was just the opposite. Though he was the youngest artist on the bill, he played the headlining set and got the loudest audience applause. Wainwright played songs that shouldn’t have worked in theory, but they did. He sang a birthday song for Bob Dylan, a send-up of Los Angeles and a song about the after-life. These sounded like half-baked ideas when introduced, but Wainwright’s lyrics were infused with such wit it didn’t matter. He also played songs about his family, coming at it from unexpected angles that were surprisingly poignant.

Memoirs highlighted most of what is best about folk music – that, despite its label as a static genre, it is full of life and the unexpected.