yes! things cost! Why do we need such things?
Yes Folk Alliance comes to mind- yes it is the folk BIZ. I respect the folk Biz. Must be great for networking and career development. Yes all important things for the professional musican. Valid, respectable. Most of America is going to some sort of convention.... a great industry (all be it raised up upon the backs of the underpriviledged and many of them immigrants who should be trained and found proper jobs but next to slavery I would say...yes I guess I am glad that they are kept employed they are good and respectible)
But attending such an event must say something a "folk Musician" I can hear them say "yes I have just spent the weekend at Folk aliance flying halfway across the country and back and it was great"....then...."I really am struggling financially and need your support".....

I am not talking here about people who are on business missionaries from government agencies etc....a good thing.

But you cant have it both ways.

So there your audience is struggling to pay the cover or the vastly over priced beer and gas money to get there maxing out their credit cards. Think of appearances as the politicos are saying however, think of what all of this adds to the overall bill of the art.

yes jet setters in the audience will not give it a second thought yes you can fill a room with them (maybe not for long) just think of the thousands near by who can not afford to get in. That is awesome.

I have long championed simple, cost free conventions. Camp, make your own bed, clean your own dishes gather in a field sing under a tree dig your own port o pots, just turn up in a national park at the same time....give the immigrant help time to go get training to obtain a living wage job- better yet take your convention bucks and give it to their cause. But simpler, cheaper can easily be done.

And yes I have long advocated these sorts of things with a number of festival organizers listening at times. I even organized in the dim past a virtually organized and run virtual tinwistle festival in Dunfannahe (Sp)

I think there is lots of thinking outside of the box to be done by everyone in the folk music food chain.

Again! yes these things cost money but, I don't drive a bently or a rolls and I get from place to place just fine. And these days if you want to network there is a thing called the t'nternet.

yes professional folkies are wondrous, legitimate, good and they need a decent wage and benefits....but we all benefit from the occasional hopeful, positive thinking of a wake up call.

Conrad