I agree with Kendall's last sentence. It happens to me a lot, and it's got to do with the pressure on yourself when you're expected to sing and the lack of it when you're not.

Anyway, Tam, I don't know which part of Europe you're in. I've lived all my life in Northern Germany and been to see many folk acts, from Britain, Ireland, the US, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, in big halls and intimate venues. Never have I encountered a PROFESSIONAL (or even semi-professional) artist who used songsheets to any degree. Some use them the way Don Firth suggests, but even that is rare. Please give us some proof for your claim. I can't think of any!

It may be ok for you if your audience doesn't mind, but I still think it isn't ok for people who lay a claim to being professionals. Mother's little helpers may be the norm in the pop and rock world; they're not in folk music where very few performers use playback. Of course it isn't grand if somebody dries up during a good song, and it happens to the best of them, but it happens rarely and I take it as an indication of their humanity and the uniqueness of that performance. Audiences seem to mind less than the performers themselves (unless it happens with every other song, of course).

Some of that uniqueness gets lost if a performer does the same set night after night. Most of the people I can think of took care not to do that, though they've got different methods of achieving this. One guy wrote out a set list with three alternatives for every song every night and put it on the floor next to the mike. As far as I could see he didn't need it most of the time. He also said that audiences in general reacted unfavourably if you included too much unfamiliar material. He put the limit at 10 to 15 per cent and extended his repertoire accordingly.

Performers can defeat themselves in other ways. I remember the only Corries gig I managed to get to, some years before Roy died. They were very lively and all, and the audience seemed to enjoy them, but my impression was that it was all too pat, worked out beforehand and delivered on cue. I felt rushed, as theough they were eager to get it over with and be on the way home. There are others, like The McCalmans or Iain MacKintosh and Hamish Imlach, or some German artists, whose patter was very familiar after some years. But they still managed to deliver it as though they'd just thought of it, and it got extended and changed in the process. Not boring at all, and certainly not pat.