Folkiedave - I agree with you. There are loads of young people at folk-ish events - they my not be in the clubs but they're certainly out there. The point I was also making in my post that, whatever your musical genre or taste, being a professional performer is a hard road to travel, and that many professional performers have other strings to their bows (no pun intended) to make ends meet. So the folk road is a hard one at the moment.

Well, so is the jazz road, from what I can see. When I was playing jazz in Brighton in the late '70s/early '80s, there was a huge jazz scene, with gigs everywhere. Mostly gone now. A shame, but there it is. I've known well-intentioned people start up jazz venues around here in the last 10 years - they run for a few months and then fold. Because the audience, for any number of reasons, just isn't there. Well, that's life. If you make a decision to become a professional musician, you have to face the facts of the business - and sometimes they're unpalatable ones. It's sometimes similar to being an actor - where I'm told that 90% of the profession are "resting" at any particular time!

It is very sad when dedicated professionals can't get a break in what they've chosen to do, but you can't necessarily change Joe Public's taste.