Well, as a 38-year veteran of the folk scene here in the U.S., the first 23 of which were spent in bars, I have to say that I really learned my craft, paid my dues, served my apprenticeship (pick one) and mastered the art of handling just about any kind of crowd.

From working with drunks and hecklers, to outlandish requests and working up comedy routines on the fly, there's no better place than a pub.

Nowadays, I do mostly festivals, folk clubs and concerts, and let me tell you that the entertainment and communication skills I picked up in the bars work in the quieter listening venues as well.

If you can handle a barful of noisy drunks, you can work a quiet listening room with no difficulty. Maryrrf who worked one of the bars I performed in is also a fine musician who can work both kinds of room.

A fellow bar-room graduate once put it to me very succinctly:
We can go into a nice, quiet, listening folk-club, or a festival stage and entertain the audience; but a folk artist who demands a listening audience couldn't get up in front of a barful of drunks and do what we do. (But then again, why would he/she want to?)


Seamus