After thirty years of singing accompanied and unaccompanied - sing what you're comfortable with. If you like a song, you will perform it better - and your audience will like it/you better.

As for pleasing the audience as a paid performer - you are booked because someone likes what you do. Therefore, they will expect to hear what you do. It is very disappointing to turn up to listen/watch someone, expecting material with which you are familiar, only to find that the performer is doing something else entirely, in the false belief that that is what his/her audeince wants.

Witness how the Beach Boys blew Elton John off stage in the the mid-seventies - they did all the old faves, whilst EJ ignored the back catalogue and only performed material from Captain Fantastic, which nobody knew.

And as for not doing a song because it isn't "folk" - what the hell is "folk"? How many Lennon/McCartney songs have been performed in folk clubs over the years? If "folk" has to be written by the great songwriter Anon, how come Robert Johnson songs are performed - and why is the music of Turlough O'Carolan so well loved in folk clubs?

So sod it - pass me the Strat, and I'll do MY version of Wild Mountain Thyme!

epn