Ron,thanks for starting this new thread - hopefully it will stay on track. But one never knows. I gave up on the one I started, after only a few US responses and that deluge of UK club free-for-all.

Here in Seattle we have a large number of folk musicians, although the singer-songwriters predominate (that's probably true most everywhere). There are several organizations that support this music.

The Seattle Folklore Society is probably the predominant one. It was founded in 1966 mainly to bring in the "source musicians" from outside the area - bluegrass and other players from Appalachia and Delta blues players. It spawned the Northwest Folklife Festival in the early 1970s, but then evolved into a booking agency and venue for mostly out-of-town singer songwriters. (here is a 2004 response from Michael Cooney to me about that: "The last time I tried to get a gig with the Seattle 'Folklore' Society, the woman doing the booking couldn't grasp the concept of someone singing songs they didn't write. So much for 'folklore'").   

A much earlier folklore society, The Pacific Northwest Folklore Society, was founded at the beginning of the Seattle folk music revival in 1953. It fell prey to the Red Scare of the '50s, but two founding members, Don Firth and Bob Nelson, and I revived it last year. That was because I was not much interested in what the SFS brought to town. They completely ignored Jeff Warner (could you imagine any better folklorist?), so I hosted a house concert for him sponsored by the Pacific NW Folklore Society. Our aim is to feature the more traditional folk music by local musicians and to preserve the folklore and folk songs of the Pacific Northwest.

And then there is Victory Music "a non-profit organization founded in 1969 to support local acoustic, jazz, blues and folk music." It supports four open mics in the Puget Sound area and publishes a monthly acoustic music magazine - Victory Review. It is largely populated by singer-songwriters, but it runs some of the best local open mics.

The SFS has the largest following and usually gets 60-100 people out to its weekly concerts. Our PNWFS had a series of Sunday afternoon concerts this summer at the Everett Public Library, where we had anywhere from 80 to 35 people in attendance. We're also doing some monthly "coffeehouse concerts" in a small Seattle cafe, where attendance has varied from 15 to 35 (35 is almost a full house for that venue).

Then I run a monthly concert series for a local N. Seattle community organization - The Haller Lake Arts Council . This isn't strictly folk music, but our aim is to bring local musicians and artists together with the community. We have a gem of a hall that will seat a max of 150, but attendance has ranged from a high of 65 down to a more usual 30 or so. One of the problems is that we're not well known (our 3rd season begins in Sept.) and the immediate community is not very supportive. We've had some great programs, the few attending have been quite enthusiastic, but it is a struggle to get people to come.

A lot of my musician friends perform in little coffeehouses, pubs, etc., but that scene is pretty dismal. One Musician's Showcase in a bar attracts some good local talent, but only the few musicians performing are actually listening (or trying to), while the other bar partons create a noisy drunken scene. I've given up trying to perform there. In the coffeehouses you end up performing to three people glued to their laptop computers (one is plugged into his iPod) and maybe two other friends. I tried that (see my post in the other thread I started), but it turns out to be more of a rehearsal than performance. But a lot of my friends keep doing that.

The open mics are a mixed thing. Our weekly N. Seattle open mic draws 20-25 musicians each week (one song each). But the audience is largely the other musicians, with only a few non-musicians. The quality varies from very good to not-so-good and occasionally very bad (but then it's an 'open mic'). But it's been a good training ground for many local musicians.

Well, that's the local scene. The audiences seem to be mostly other musicians, and there's so many things going on that the few can't support them all. My biggest question is how to get other people to come out. They are probably not aware of the local talent, that there are local folks who actually perform music and some of it can be quite good. They will come out to hear big-name out-of-town performers in huge crowded venues at outrageous prices because that's what the local press and commercial music interests tells them they should - it's got to be good!

I'll stop here and comment more later on.

Cheers, S. in Seattle