I don't have the experience of visiting a wide range of clubs across the country, but the best ones I go to locally do book "up and coming" young acts as well as the established older hands. The reaction to these younger people is usually positive in my experience, and the (mainly middle-aged) punters usually express the view that it's good to see younger people performing in the clubs, as it indicates hope for the future, etc., etc. You often do get young friends and fans of the performers coming along as audience members too.

I wonder if some clubs don't invite or book young performers because they don't think they would go down well with the predominantly older audience? If this is the case then I guess these clubs will die out with the audience and organisers. Good organisers will try to balance the 'tried and tested' with the new acts, and from what I've seen, this works, by and large. But I don't claim to be an expert, as I'm not an organiser, just a punter and performer.

How to get young people to come along? One of the things that got me to come along to my then local folk club as a teenager was when the club did a show at our school. This was free to the attendees (us schoolkids). It got at least me interested enough to start going along to the club, and after a short while, performing as a resident myself. I don't know whether any clubs still do that sort of thing, but it might be worth thinking about?

Once you get younger people in, you need to encourage them and not stamp on their efforts by saying "that's not proper folk music" or whatever. Once they get involved they will want to learn from the older performers anyway, but to start with you need to nurture them and not frighten them off before they've got started.

I do appreciate the problem of the boring resident singers who churn out the same old songs week in, week out, and I've often experienced it myself, even at one well known club that is otherwise exemplary. I'm not sure what the answer to that is. I often appear myself as a floor singer or support act, and I always try to sing as many 'new' songs (i.e. that I haven't previously done at the same venue) as I can - I enjoy the challenge of learning and trying out new material and I continually aim to widen my repertoire. I could just sing the same half-dozen songs each time, but that would be just as boring for me as for the audience. Of course I occasionally do sing songs I've done before (songs are after all not just meant to be sung only once), but I try not to do anything I've done recently - unless as occasionally happens, I get a request!

So why do these 'boring' singers keep doing the same old stuff? If we could analyse that it might help. Perhaps they like to stick to the tried and tested, instead of going through the hassle of remembering words to new songs? Or are they just complacent or even arrogant?

How can the organiser deal with them? I guess many of these people are old friends and the organiser may find it difficult to deal with them without upsetting them. Maybe they need to organise more sessions and invite the best people from those to do the odd floor spot or support slot (depending on how the club operates), to widen the pool of floor singers/residents. Then they could say to the 'stage hog' that they will alternate with someone else. If these people take umbrage that's tough. Hopefully they will understand that they have no 'right' to a particular spot every week, which from the above posts I gather is the position in some clubs.

Apologies for the rambling nature of this post, but I hope it might lead to further discussion about how to deal with the various problems that seem to lead to clubs dying out.