Absolutely Stanron! I guess you had to be there.

For one thing there were about a million degrees of separation between us and the WMC audience. Education, culture, musical experience, sense of humour, social attitude.
We were (as folkies) quite unfitted for the job of entertaining these people
But you've heard the traddies on Mudcat - there was no room for us on the folk scene. No prospect of earning a living.
But we had to earn money to afford instruments, strings, put food on the table, etc. And we had to be musicians. Nothing else gave you the time to work and concentrate on music. So you played music that wasn't really your bag - you did your best. I played country and western solo and in a group, ordinary singalong sixties stuff, Irish songs in the great theme bar nonsense, in old peoples homes, care homes.. I was just a jobbing singer guitarist. I even managed to write the German pop song. But i was no more a working man, Irish or a country and western cowboy than I was German.

Howeveryou did learn how to get people up dancing, singing along , etc and quite a lot of folksingers didn't and indeed took pleasure in confronting populat taste, rather than trying to assimilate like we did.