as an american singing in ireland, i always felt flattered and honored and downright warm and fuzzy when the pub-goers would hush for me. here at home, of course, you have to show them something truly astounding before they'll give you any "space" at all... but at the pubs i frequent, a cappella singing is so rare they usually startle into silence all by themselves.

it's kind of sad, actually; a long parade of fabulous and roundly ignored singer/songwriter/guitarists ends with me piping a song i learned off some disk somewhere, and suddenly they go quiet. then all those other musicians with their busted egos refuse to speak to me or even meet my eye (a rudeness deserving of its own thread, in my opinion), and i feel like shouting "it's not because i'm so much better than you! it's because i gave them something unexpected, and you can do that, too!"

if folks aren't shutting up for your singers, my guess is there's too much a cappella singing going on for a north american (or scottish, i guess) audience. you have two options: either make a cappella more of a novelty and see if they come around, or create your own little cultural island. get the publican and the staff on your side and slowly train the regulars to expect to be shushed for a singer. maybe you'll end up with regulars who want to be shushed, and then you'll have a real treasure.