Although she was a significant presence on the folk scene between the late '70s and mid-'80s, it's difficult to categorize Kate Wolf as a folk performer.
Although she largely employed acoustic instrumentation, she really owed more to the contemporary singer-songwriting movement than folk-based traditions. While it's easy to imagine her music appealing to fans of, say, Joni Mitchell, she never made the slightest impact on the rock audience, and barely drew from rock elements at all in her own work.
Her music also had a strong country flavor, though not of the Nashville variety. Her fusion of country, folk, and singer-songwriter influences helped point the way for later country-folk-pop performers such as Nanci Griffith and Mary-Chapin Carpenter before her untimely death in 1986 at the age of 44 after a battle with leukemia. ~ All Music Guide