Just speaking from personal experience, largely centred on certain folk clubs in the North East of England throughout the 70s / 80s / 90s - the irony being that I missed the fabled Boden Years at the Colpitts in Durham because I was giving up smoking. Absenting myself from Folk Clubs make this easier even though we were living in Durham at the time. Even when we returned (around 2005 when the Durham club had been forced to relocate on account of the Sam Smiths Issue) the pub wasn't entirely non-smoking, though the club room was... Still the beer, still the roaring choruses in which to fine-tune ones sense of harmony. Indeed, my experience of folk is of people finding their own voices through the communal medium of folk clubs. I guess I was just about old enough / young enough for this to be practicable. I've known some some great voices in my time, young & old, singers & storytellers, and all of them perfectly natural, which is the essence of the thing for me. But as you say - different strokes, etc.