Guest (S. in Seattle) - it's surely possible that I didn't say it correctly on an earlier post, but you wrote what I have been thinking all along this path - audiences for ALL types of music are
disappearing; so, I will go back to my earlier point - live music in 2008 simply does not matter to most folks. Unless the music is presented in a major venue and/or is itself, an "event" - most folks simply do not care.

In my opinion there are at lease a thousand reasons for this and most of them revolve around technology and (again, my opinion) the reality that musicians are not the "heros" of the younger folk these days - it's actors, athletes and "pop stars" who usually cannot read music, don't play an instument and are not particulary good singers without a ton of electronic manipulation - but damn, they sure look good, don't they?

I also happen to think that there is an attitude - spoken or not - that prevails just about anywhere "local" talent performs, and that is - if you're any good, what are you doing here? Why are you not in Nashville, or L.A., or New York?

To me it's cultural and it's just where we're at at the moment; I mean, gee, I know DJ's who make five or six times what the average sideman makes in a nights work, so how do you compete with that?
The answer is that you can't if the people say you can't. I don't have an answer for it but I'm gonna keep on keepin' on because that's what I do. You do it for the love and you do it for the money, but you can't force folks to come out and listen if they just don't give a rats ass. Goodnight from Texas.