Jed-

I appreciate your need to work and your profession.

So many people can not afford to go out in my city to hear good folk music that it is unbelievable.

Your work would be more profitable if you could reach them and bring them into the tent.

Travel is important at times and helpful- I understand fully, however there is the necessity to have the costs absorbed before they reach the consumer or you will minimize the number of consumers.

If so many of the potential audience find the cost of attendance excessive, prohibitive they are being screwed, shunned by someone.
The fact that the venue or performer is content with the numbers that make it past the cost is irrelevant.

The point is what is keeping our music from being as affordable as it could be>? You may not be entirely responsible but somehow it should be fixable in some way.

If McDonalds was content with selling burgers to a small segment of the population then there would not be a mcdonalds on every corner as there is now.

If folk artists and venues maybe even brewers and distributors managed costs as well as fast food places folk venues like hamburger places would be on every corner too and you as the provider of "the beef" of the operation would be making more as well. There would even have to be more of you!

Conrad