And part of the problem is that up and comers generally play bars rather than soft-seaters when they go on the road. You can have performers under 19, but not an under-19 audience. Even if technically they can be admitted, the owners don't want them because they don't drink, and if they do drink, they do it illegally and risk the license.

Folk clubs are generally so God-awful crushingly dull and pretentious, and so full of rules, New Age superstitions, exceedingly bad coffee, and anally retentive farts and fogies that I can't blame the kids for not going. A Metallica concert or a rave sure sounds more fun to me. In fact, I can't think of a place that presents traditional music more out of context than the modern folk club. The reverence and pedantry with which the music is presented reminds me of a Bible study class. At least sailors, dragoons, ploughboys, and flash girls really did roister in taverns.

There are "folkies" of a sort playing at the coffee shops that the teenagers like to frequent, but they tend to be contempory-style singer/songwriters and don't play traditional stuff. I'm not not knocking them for this, because some of them are quite good, just pointing out that traditional music is generally not heard in these places.