Folk Music professional versus amateur

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 10:05 AM

johncharles ~~ to remind you again: do not forget the vast army of semi-pros between your two categories ~ the continuum, as you aptly called it above.

~M~

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: johncharles
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 09:58 AM

Will, to stop the discussion become an argument over the meaning of words; I am using the word "professional" to define musicians who make their living solely through their music, and "amateur" for people who receive no income but play for pleasure.
I am sure both groups try to give of their best when playing.
I agree there is always a market but some people assume that the "folk market" is discriminating against them unfairly. My contention is that this is not so.
john

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 09:57 AM

"However I think the term 'professional' isn't about whether you live on music earnings or not - it's about having a serious attitude and attention to the music, playing it as best as you can so that, wherever and whenever you play, you give it your very best."

Hear, hear! And I'm sure people will want to do just that.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Will Fly
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 09:35 AM

4. Play what the current market wishes to hear

By 'current market' do you mean the current folk market (whatever that is)?

I've never consciously done that in 40+ years of playing which includes folk, blues, jazz, rock'n roll and funk - sometimes simultaneously. I've just played whatever I wanted to play at the time, irrespective of fashion, and played for major periods of time in 4 bands in different genres.

One of the things that I've learned over the years is that, if you play well enough, with commitment and energy and constant practice, there'll always be people who want to hear you play - and always people who want to give you money - regardless of what you do. A market of one sort or another will always exist. For a few years I was 'professional' in the sense that I made enough to live on, but gave it up as it was killing the music in me. (Clacton one night, Southport the next, Hastings the next...).

However I think the term 'professional' isn't about whether you live on music earnings or not - it's about having a serious attitude and attention to the music, playing it as best as you can so that, wherever and whenever you play, you give it your very best.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 09:26 AM

Well I won't argue with other people's anecdotal experience of gig-going; I'll just comment that it doesn't match my anecdotal experience of gig-going by any stretch. (I will however point out that it's not just the activity of "going to see random bands", it's specifically going to see "a particular genre", week-in-week-out.)

I've found the disparity between the folk scene and the rock scene - in terms of infrastructure, ease of gettng gigs, audience attentiveness, amount of CDs sold afterwards - to be immense.

After Peggy Seeger's recent London gig, the merchandise stall was swamped. She sold full-price CDs and books by the truckload. One thing really stuck in my mind as being very revealing as the difference between folk audiences and rock audieneces: somebody picked up one small plastic slipcase CDR that was priced at £4 and said, incredulously, "is this really only £4?" That did make me smile - "only in folk", I thought. Recent indie gig I'd attended, by The Lovely Eggs, the merchandise table was utterly untroubled. (Despite the gig being packed and enthusiastic. At one of Brixton's great Offline nights)

If you regularly play open-mic/singer-songwriter type gigs in London, you'll know that there are literally thousands of young, good-looking, competent, pleasant-voiced singer-songwriters out there. They are competing with hundreds of thousands of their kind up and down the country. By contrast, the young, good-looking, competent, pleasant-voiced singers on the trad folk scene are competing with far, far fewer people.

This probably sums it up: a folk singer could be supporting a Top-10 album act such as the Unthanks or Bellowhead before they've even had an EP out. On a smaller scale, on the folk scene you can showcase your talents to a packed house simply by turning up to do a floorspot when a legend is playing.

This isn't a complaint - for me this is all part of the folk scene's charm. But it is a small world. I sometimes wonder, at singer-songwriter gigs, what would happen if the cat got out of the bag. Folk clubs would be deluged by all the competent, ambitious, professional singer-songwriters with pleasant voices clutching Folk Songs For Dummies.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: r.padgett
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 09:17 AM

Interesting comments John!

It seems it is easier for younger performers with some level of expertise to break into being paid to perform at festivals and concert type clubs. They do not have the hang ups that old stagers like us have!

There is to my mind two distinct strains of folk acts. Certain acts go down better at festivals using main stage! others need to be very good to be solo performers to be successful main stage!

Other acts are much better in smaller folk clubs and have a following

We have "Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican" who I believe are a clever bunch of lads who are likely to be better in the folk club than when they appeared in the concert venue (Barnsley folk club venue Trades Club, next Monday!)
Ray

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 08:42 AM

Matt: I've played there many times myself. Have to say that that in itself rather proves my point: can't say there's ever been anyone in the audience who had "just turned up on spec".

Me, almost certainly, if you've played there a lot. I'm on their email list, but I'll just go up sometimes without even checking out who's playing. Used to do the same at PoerPoint in Brighton, too.

And all my kids do it...just go along to see random bands without knowing them, that is. One of them's in London and another's now in St Petersburg, so she's seeing *really* random bands!

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 08:27 AM

I'm quite sure that people go "on spec" to the Red Lion in Northfleet (mostly metal and grunge), to the Tap'n'Tin in Chatham (not sure now used to be mainly metal and grunge with some indie and jazz-funk), To the Man of Kent in Rochester (mostly acoustic) to the Good Intent in Rochester (folk at least 3 times a month other contingent stuff about as many) to the Barge in Gillingham (varied, quite a lot near-folk) to the Beacon COUrt in GIllingham (not sure these days, used to be themed by nights of the week with tribute bands Saturdays), the Nag's Head in Rochester (folk, rock, and blues).

I say that you don't have to be a good musician to make success in electric music - it helps but there are real fumblefingers out there, usually still doing punk. And others doing DoS big style.

And "invitation" gigs also happen in electric. One of my daughter's bands had to push to get on to the bill at a venue in Nottingham, the organiser was a twat, the headliners were arrogant and incompetent, and at the end of the night the organiser walked straight past the headliners and said "You were terrific, will you play our Xmas party" - and daughter's band took great delight in saying "NO". They were splitting and most moving to Londin, but the organiser didn't know that.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Musket
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 08:26 AM

Always mindful of finding out whether people are using the two terms to indicate a level of competence or to distinguish between hobby and livelihood.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: theleveller
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 08:16 AM

The "versus" implies a conflict. I think it's more "horses for courses".

We all have our favourite professionals and appreciate the commitment, dedication and sometimes sheer genius that they combine to make them so special. On the other hand, for many of us the greatest pleasure is being able to have a go ourselves. The term 'amateur' covers a multitude of sins – and talent. On the one hand there's the person whose ability is up there with the best pros but who, for whatever reason, chooses not to join their ranks. On the other, there's the ear-searing efforts of the two-chord merchant whose repertoire seems to consist solely of Where Have All the Flowers Gone and The Wild Rover but who, after hundreds of attempts, still hasn't managed to remember the words or the tune.

The problem often is not a shortage of performers but a shortage of audience. At one club I used to go to the performer/audience ratio is around 20 to 1. Everyone wants to play but the price is that you have to listen to everyone else. For me, the price, I'm afraid, became too high. Others, no doubt, feel the same about my efforts. As a rule, though, I think that if you're going to play in public you owe it to your audience to put in the effort to be as good as you possibly can. Anything less is doing yourself and those listening to you a disservice.

If a professional folk musician can't earn a living from what he/she does I'm afraid that, as with any other profession, they have to take a hard and honest look at their abilities and market and make the necessary adjustments or find a new job.As my old dad told me many years ago - and as I tell my children - the world doesn't owe you a living; you've got to get out there and prove that you're worth whatever people are prepared to pay you.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Silas
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 08:08 AM

The 'problem' is item no. 4 on your list.

Folk musicians and singers play what they want to play and its up to you wether you want to listen or not. And that is the way it should be in my opinion.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Midchuck
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 07:49 AM

One problem {I used to call it "The Problem", & once made it the topic of my monthly Folk Review column & got quite a lot of feedback IIRC} is that of the semi-pro who is so successful that he/she gets 2,3,4 gigs some weeks, involving much work & travel & late nights to bed; but still has to be up for work next morning & do a day's work which will not reflect badly, or cause disappointment or let-down to office colleagues, pupils, &c ~~ but still not making quite enough to be able to ditch the day-job, which is bound to suffer in such a situation, & go full-time.

My problem exactly, for many years, although we'd only get 2,3, or 4 gigs in a week one or two weeks in high summer - and now, with the economy down, not even then. There is a solution. It's called "Social Security." Or whatever they call the same thing in Old Blighty. But you have to wait for it.

Speaking of the economy being down, I note a tendency for the "real professionals" to take gigs that they previously wouldn't have been bothered with, displacing the part-timers. Or is that just me?

P.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 07:33 AM

But in the rock/pop/indie band circuit, the idea that there could be a whole network of venues where ANYBODY AT ALL would turn up and pay to hear somebody they have never heard before is pie-in-the-sky territory.

Pie in trhe sky? Hardly. We've got such a place in Harlow ( here, and I don't think it's untypical of what exists elsewhere. And of course there are also pubs which regularly put on unknown groups.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 07:28 AM

Rob - that's not my experience of two decades of gig-going in London (and two years in Manchester). At the risk of sounding like a snooty Londoner, I suspect that things are a little different in towns where there's literally only one or two venues.

(I reckon I've got a better grasp of the London and indeed national indie scene than most: I've played in various indie bands since I was 16, touring nationally and internationally)

Though I'm glad to hear you regularly trek to my local, The Windmill. A lovely little venue that's just round the corner from me.

I've played there many times myself. Have to say that that in itself rather proves my point: can't say there's ever been anyone in the audience who had "just turned up on spec".

I started playing the odd folk song in public about 5 years ago. Right from the start, I was amazed at the fact that I'd get offered gigs without asking for them. That simply never happened with indie bands.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 07:15 AM

Yes, John ~ semi-professional was the term I used.

One problem {I used to call it "The Problem", & once made it the topic of my monthly Folk Review column & got quite a lot of feedback IIRC} is that of the semi-pro who is so successful that he/she gets 2,3,4 gigs some weeks, involving much work & travel & late nights to bed; but still has to be up for work next morning & do a day's work which will not reflect badly, or cause disappointment or let-down to office colleagues, pupils, &c ~~ but still not making quite enough to be able to ditch the day-job, which is bound to suffer in such a situation, & go full-time.

Anyone have views on that particular cleft-stick in which I recall several of my friends getting trapped? How have people solved this particular problem?

~M~

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 07:09 AM

Matt: I'm not suggesting that attendance for a Martin Carthy gig at a folk club will be identical to that of, say, a Rapunzel & Sedayne gig, or even a Lucy Ward gig. But in the rock/pop/indie band circuit, the idea that there could be a whole network of venues where ANYBODY AT ALL would turn up and pay to hear somebody they have never heard before is pie-in-the-sky territory.

I don't think that's true.

In my home town of Tunbridge Wells there are two venues where this happens all the time, The Forum and The Grey Lady Music Lounge.

Both put on a wide range of acts, mainly local but The Forum also puts on some nationally known acts, usually when they're "up and coming" and haven't quite made it but have a cult following (as soon as they make it they get too expensive!). Grey Lady does some jazz, but also a lot of folky and indie rock stuff too.

People oten just go along to these venues and go in to see what's cooking.

Same thing up the road in both Tonbridge and Sevenoaks where I (and other like-minded people) will just go along to see people they've never heard of. I also regularly go as far as The Windmill pub in Brixton to listen to random Indie acts that I've never heard of.

In fact, throughout the South East (and probably elsewhere) there's a network of paying venues where "unknown" Indie bands or artistes play. The "form" is to have 3 or 4 bands on the bill which each do a set of 35-45 minutes. Entry charges vary from £5.00 up to £10 (in London). It's a fantastic way to open your mind to the new stuff that youngsters are doing. There's a lot of crap of course, but it's worth it for the occasional absolute gem.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 06:48 AM

I think the combination of both views sums it up. I fall (just!) into the latter group: over the years I must have done hundreds of floor-spots, and normally got in for free in return, but I've also done the odd paid gig and back in the 80s I was an occasional MC at the Bell & Pump in Birmingham (UK), on the nights when the Mad Jocks weren't there, and Derek Grinnell used to bung me a fiver.

Loved every minute of it.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: johncharles
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 06:38 AM

Michael yes there is a continuum. however the term usually applied to performers who get paid regularly is semi-professional not semi-amateur.
john

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 06:34 AM

Frankly, when you compare the folk scene to pop or rock (or indie or metal or soul or electronica) I think the folk scene is probably the EASIEST scene it is possible to get into. I've seen acts go from folk clubs to festivals within a year.

I can't think of any other genre that has a national network of weekly/fortnightly venues with such loyal audiences. The "club" setup, whereby audiences turn up to hear live acts predominantly because of GENRE (rather than performer), is something inconceivable in live rock music.

The closest analogy would be something like Ronnie Scotts in London (where jazz fans and/or tourists might turn up irrespective of who's playing "to hear some jazz").

I'm not suggesting that attendance for a Martin Carthy gig at a folk club will be identical to that of, say, a Rapunzel & Sedayne gig, or even a Lucy Ward gig. But in the rock/pop/indie band circuit, the idea that there could be a whole network of venues where ANYBODY AT ALL would turn up and pay to hear somebody they have never heard before is pie-in-the-sky territory.

Subject: RE: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 06:22 AM

But there is an in=between group, surely. A professional is one who works at it full time, practising when not gigging, and earns enough to rely on this for sole means of sustenance; and some will make better livings than others, on the criteria expressed by john above.

Then there are those who attend FCs, singarounds, open mics &c. performing often to a high standard but receiving no money.

But surely there is another, in-between group. Many years ago, in 70s-80sx when I had two jobs, Head of Upper School by day, theatre, book and folk-music critic the rest of the time, getting paid for my reviews and features by The Guardian, The Times, TES, Folk Review &c. ~ I also ran an entry in the Folk Directtory, & every few weeks a club [or even occasional festival] would invite me to do a paid gig, paid at about the mid-point of what singers earned at that time. I am retired from most things, apart from an online Shakespeare journal for whom I still do theatre reviews for love not money, so not that much in touch with the scene. But surely there are still some of this last category of semi- [or even, as one might say, ¼-] professionals around?

~Michael~

Subject: Folk Music professional versus amateur
From: johncharles
Date: 29 Nov 11 - 06:08 AM

Folk Music professional versus amateur
A number of recent threads including the Occupy Folk music ones, bemoan the fact that apparently great acts can't break into the folk scene due to some shadowy cabal deeming them inappropriate.
These acts I assume to be professional; to the extent that they are seeking paid gigs and expect to be in the running for awards e.g. BBC folk awards.
Any profession will be competitive and none more so than music.
In order to succeed any artist must in my opinion as a minimum:-
1.        Be technically very competent.
2.        Ideally have some unique characteristic
3.        Pursue a relentless campaign of publicity and networking to maximise exposure
4.        Play what the current market wishes to hear
5.        Be persistent and get lucky
Many artists will still fail to gain the recognition they may think they deserve. That is the market at work in the real world and either change your act or live with it.
In the folk world I inhabit most of the performers are amateurs, for us it is a hobby, a social occasion where like minded people gather to make music to the best of their abilities ( there are some extremely talented amateurs). We gravitate towards the groups/clubs which play the music we like and we are not paid nor seeking recognition and awards.
I believe that as an amateur whatever type of music you play there will be some venue/club/group which meets your needs. As a professional things will be very different and just being technically good is unlikely to be enough to break into a very competitive field.
john