As someone who has NOT been going going to folk clubs for years, and therefore can speak with relatively NO authority on the subject, I thought I'd like to chuck my two-penneth in.....:)

I've been going to my local folk club for just about 1 year. I'm 33 (the youngest at the club), and I'm sorry to say that in that year I have started to both put on weight AND get a bit whiskery. We meet every week, and most nights its a singaround. There's about 10-15 of us who turn up regularly, some who are good, some who are not so good. We have a raffle each week, and the proceeds go towards booking a guest, some of whom were good, and some of whom...well, you get the picture. We occasionally have a visitor pop their head around the door, and I feel that they're always made welcome. They're invited to contribute a song, tune, story, joke, poem or whatever else tickles their fancy. If they don't want to, that's fine too.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that whilst going to this club has most definitely made me a better musician (I'm just now starting to get bookings in local pubs etc, and playing at the club has really helped me along), and whilst it also provides a venue of sorts for local folk musicians to come and get paid, none of these are the real reason why I like it so much.

I like the club because I have met some good, interesting, funny people, and made new friends. Plain and simple. Some of them can sing and play really nicely, Some couldn't hold tune in a bucket. But I'm not sure that that's the point. If my mate sat next to me starts the finger-in-ear routine whilst warbling some 18thC song about a woman dressing up as a man and going to sea before being eaten by a whale (or something....) then I'm not going to suggest that they don't bother next time 'cos it was crap. These are my mates were talking about!

We meet up, have a beer, have a sing and a joke, we try to make others feel welcome to join us and do the same. That's the point of a folk club the way I see it. However, if I want to actually go and hear someone who is really, really good, then I pay to go to a concert hall and hear them. I don't expect to find them in a folk club.

As I say, I'm not really a "folkie" as such. I am a musician, but not expressly a folk musician, so I might have this all wrong. But it seems to me that if you're looking for professional standards in a folk club, you're looking in the wrong place. Just as if you went to a concert hall looking for a laugh a joke and a song with your mates, you'd be looking in the wrong place. I don't see anything wrong with that. Music is supposed to be fun.