One thing I think we all can do is define "career" and "audience" too narrowly. If you define career as paying gigs, and audience as a large group of people who already know and admire your music (and you,) you're going to spend much of your time sitting around at home. If you define career as playing for people in any environment where people will listen and enjoy you, that opens up all sorts of other possibilities.... senior centers, churches, community events that have little or no budget, health care centers, homeless shelters, etc. If you're trying to make a living from folk music, you have to end up taking a lot of lousy bookings, playing to disappointingly small audiences, and driving half your life away. One of my favorite definitions of a folk singer is someone who drives all of their life, occasionally taking a break to sing. And, because you're dependent upon people who run concert series to promote your concert, there are those times when they advance work hasn't been done, and you play to next to no one. I thought that I'd set the record when I played to one person (who was twenty minutes late) one bitter winter's night in New York City. I didn't even tie it. A friend of mine who has lived on the road all of his life drew ZERO people. You get all kinds...

Jerry