How good is your folk club?

Subject: RE: How good is your folk club?
From: Dave Wynn
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 02:39 PM

The BBC have an annual best folk club award. The clubs are voted for by a selection of performers (I believe, so please take this as hearsay). The winners are therefore concert type clubs and while I have no axe to grind here, concert clubs are not my personal idea of a folk club.

My idea of a folk club is where like minded people, both performers and audience, go to share a common interest. In my idea of a folk club, audience can become performers by encouragement and effort. I would slightly change Clive's quote by saying a folk club is as good as all it's singers nights (and some of it's concert nights too). The Bothy club in Southport is a fine example of such a club.

In a purely concert club no overt encouragement is offered to help audience become performers except by showing just how good some performers are and thus encourage by example.

Didn't mean this to sound so damn clinical...sorry.

Spot

Subject: RE: How good is your folk club?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 02:29 PM

Certainly goes for mine, but probably not in the way you might think.

We have guest nights only three or four times a year, so singers nights abound. Numbers range from twenty or so down to a "committee meeting" of seven plus two audients (who never miss one).

It makes no difference, as those attending enjoy them immensely. The takings average out to allow us to pay our guests, provide food on special occasions, and even offer free admission to our Christmas guest night, something we don't normally advertise widely for obvious reasons.

Those in the know usually come, and it's one of the high spots of the year. The raffle tends to pay for the next round of advertising.

I'd say that the "only as good as the last singers night" tag works pretty well for us.

Don T.

Subject: RE: How good is your folk club?
From: BB
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 02:27 PM

I rather assume that what Clive is saying is that a good folk club doesn't *need* guests: they're just the icing on the cake.

If that's what he's saying, I agree with him, and have been saying so for years.

Our monthly club usually has around thirty people or so in attendance, over 80% of whom are performers. We have a 'visiting performer' every couple of months or less, who gives us just half-a-dozen items or so during the evening, which is at least three times as much as anyone else gets a chance to do.

And I do believe that guest artists are important: in bringing in different ideas, greater heights for local performers to attain, different instruments, arrangements - all sorts of things - which keep the local performers fresh and on their toes.

But in order to have continually good singers' nights (or performers' nights), the encouragement to perform, the welcome, the atmosphere has to be in place and ongoing, otherwise the club can disappear up its own backside as attendance numbers dwindle.

Sorry - bit of a hobby horse of mine - and they're getting very close too!

Barbara

Subject: RE: How good is your folk club?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 01:32 PM

Well, it depends on the club, but that probably goes for Herga!

Kitty

Subject: How good is your folk club?
From: Sooz
Date: 21 Mar 05 - 01:17 PM

In an article about 40 years of the Southport Folk Club in the latest Living Tradition magazine, Clive Pownceby ends with a suggestion that a club is only as good as its last singers night. "Now there's a new thread for Mudcat" is his challenge. Be a shame to miss the opportunity!