Same goes for around here (the Lothians). There's no clear dividing line between folk clubs and sessions. Edinburgh and Leith FCs are clearly on the full-on folk club side (main act taking up most of the evening with floor spots from friends of the committee before), everybody else is like what Tootler describes.

I'm not very interested in venues where there's a committee applying "quality" standards of the sort Diane seems to want. It usually stops anything really startling from happening, obliterates traditional content and leaves you with a bunch of singer-songwriter material favoured by the committee and their friends.

This is particularly important when trying to get the very old to perform. They can often pull off quite astonishing things but no way are they going to send in a demo CD first. In a session-like scene where performances can range from the mindblowing to the toecurling, they can suddenly come out with things you would never hear anywhere else.