"Who you know" is certainly a good start to get you seen performing somewhere. Make some friends and try not to make any enemies - everyone seems to know everyone in the folk scene!

"Being well known" is definitely a priority. We sent a promo pack to a festival, the organisers mentioned to some friends of ours saying "it's very nice but we've never heard of them" and we still haven't been booked. No names...

With clubs, there's nothing to beat travelling and doing floor spots.
If we get a gig miles away from home and we can't add a booking for a consecutive night we often find a club where we haven't played, that meets the previous or next night and do a spot there, and that lands a booking for six months later.

Getting some festival exposure is also a good way to get club bookings, especially at clubs too far from home to apply the "floor spot" method. It used to be the other way round, but that was wheen a medium sized town had a folk club every night of the week and gigs were easy to get.

And my absolute favourite advice ever about all this from Jacey Bedford: "overnight success takes much longer than you think"

If you're looking for gigs, good luck, keep working at it and don't get put off by those who say no.

Anahata