"What I'm experiencing now is that a whole number of cafes are being run by 50 & ups who happen to be former folk musicians"

If you take the word 'cafe' and replace it with any other type of social gathering point, then reiterate with Stewart's point that "...the key is an owner who loves the music.", then I think that is a fairly good reading of the way that it is going at the present.

Banjiman notes that "... luckily we still have some pubs left that are prepared to put on/ allow real music...", but again the key to it all is the engagement and enthusiasm of the owner of the place; one who is more interested in 'providing' than in 'selling' the product.

"I'm really tired of playing pubs to counter the fact that folk clubs can't afford very much" I think the term 'playing pubs' generates a negative attitude towards that end of the entertainment spectrum; some of it is justified, but moreso because of the audience one expects in the places, who generally speaking want nothing else only the 'Come All Ye...' songs.

The trick, there, is to get those eejits out of the place on the nights you want to run a 'Folk Club' in the place.

Pubs operate on a monthly/quarterly budget.
If they don't they're not good managers.
Those that provide entertainment, also have a monthly/--- budget: Their accountant takes their ingoings with outgoings, subtracts one from the other and tells you how much you can spend on Entertainment.
Most of the Friday/Sat night crowd will not be there when you have the 'Tuesday Night Folk Club', or whatever, in that pub, and if the thing is advertised well enough , especially by the pub, as part of their 'Entertainment Schedule', then the whole thing is a lot more integrated; no different from 'Darts Night'

There are a lot of Folk musicians who make excuses for the music, that it is outside the mainstream and somehow inferior because of it, but the main judges of that should be the public.
How the public have it presented to them is also a key to it's success.

The kids are coming on fine, yes, but as you say, Jim, they're turning their heads away from the traditional, and, personally, I don't think that is a particularly good direction for the pendulum to swing, because as Peace says "...folk has not exposed itself to the newer generations. It was not presented and found lacking. It's just not been presented in a medium the kids use."... and, because the new proprietors of these 'new' Folk Clubs (the above mentioned 50's and upwards), are not of the IT generation, the kids (who most definitely are), have the ups on us.

I think now with Pub Culture going mad in Britain, the (on the whole) gentler, folk music audience, will take their music away from the pubs themselves.

Coffee-houses, Book stores, Irish and English pubs the World over (if they designate a night for it....and promote the damn thing...), will be the inheritors of the 'Folk Club' mantle in future years.

B.