"that couldn't find it's folk arse with both hands"
At least, in the clubs I go to, we don't mistake it for a balaclava helmet, i.e. something to stuff your head into.

"no residents, no policy, no organising committee and usually no publicity.
They are there for the locals and depend entirely on the good-will and co-operation of the publican"
That's still a close enough description of the club I go to most often. I doubt anyone would be remotely offended if you popped in one night and said that in Ireland we'd be called a Song Circle rather than a Folk Club. Someone might suggest that in older times we'd be recognised as a glee club, and before that we'd have been the ones huddled round the latest broadside. When most of us first started to drink in pubs we'd simply have been that bunch who like to make a racket on a Wednesday night. "Folk club" is a convenient label that prevents us from being mistaken for a choir or an orchestra or a gathering of electro-technology dependant musicians.

But you've no excuse to abuse our knowledge and ability. Some of us are professional or semi-professional musicians of skill and experience, others are improving tyros, (self not included in either category.) Good performances are frequent and welcomed, but so are good tries.
We've a pretty fair idea of what traditional folk is, and where we are in relation to it. None of us is within that elite group of primitives that you would admit to being "folk;" no gypsies, ploughboys* or mill-workers, as far as I know, though we do have a good leavening of deep-water seamen. Some of us, being of the sixties generation, sing sixties songs. Some of us, being middle-class, sing songs of that golden Victorian age of middle-class music. Sneer if you want to, but we are true to our roots.   We sing and play the songs and music that suit our background and preferences, which is all that can be said for your Travellers.


*Not quite correct; at least one knows the difference between a slade and a sidecarp.