I think Rabbi Sol articulated a problem many concert organizers have - which is that there are so many talented, deserving performers that there just aren't enough slots for them. I help run a strictly traditional concert series so of course that immediately eliminates anyone who is principally a singer/songwriter (we have nothing against singer songwriters, but we wanted to dedicate our series to traditional music, because there are so few available venues). So, right off the bat, we are not exactly "mainstream".   While we don't book people just because we think they will bring in an audience, we do have to try to have performers who, in addition to being artistically worthwhile, will please the audience and keep them coming. For example, while we three organizers would enjoy an entire evening of unaccompanied ballads, we're pretty sure our usual audience just wouldn't be ready for that, so we've had to turn down some prospective singers. We also try to have a nice mix of different styles and traditions, and we might, for example, turn down a performer who specialized in Appalachian music because we felt we'd had too many concerts of that genre, and we needed some variety.

I agree with Rabbi Sol, it's hard to say no. And the reason a concert organizer says no may have nothing to do with whether or not they appreciate and/or admire the performer. We're certainly not bowing to commercial pressure or booking people because we think they'll make us money (we DON'T make money of of this series!) but we do have to keep the series viable by filling seats, and that means pleasing the audience.

There is another acoustic series in Richmond similar to ours, but they do tend to book singer songwriters. We've teamed up with them, to our mutual benefit. We announce each other's concerts, distribute each other's flyers, and have links to each other's websites. We've noticed quite a bit of crossover, and we feel that we're helping to build the acoustic music scene in Richmond, and that it has helped both our concert series.

I agree about house concerts. If we had big enough houses that's what we'd be doing!