"One of my very good friends spent years travelling round doing floor spots in the hope of being booked. The result - the club organisers didn't book him but 'hoped he would return and do us more songs another night'."
There are simply too many acts looking for too few gigs, and every organiser is striking a difficult balance between getting the audience in and giving newcomers a chance. Look for opportunities to play at other venues. Even contemplating the idea of putting on a concert in a local village hall focuses you sharply on the organiser's perennial problem - will anyone come? Publicity is a fascinating game I'm just beginning to learn to play. Advertise in the local folk magazines, send stuff to the local papers, build a web site, take leaflets to sessions - none of those work miracles but all make a small difference and one day the combined effort will break that "we've never heard of them" barrier.

And stallion: "don't do it for the money, the adulation or the fame, do it for yourself" - well yes, there's very few doing it for the money, and they're either working their asses off or permanently broke. We treat a tour or a festival as a sort of subsidised holiday. Playing local weddings and birthday parties as a ceilidh band is probably the only profitable bit of the business. We've shown the taxman a four-figure loss every year we've been doing accounts. Keep the day jobs, chaps and chapesses: I'm certainly hoping to keep mine until I hit retirement age!

Anahata